Valve VRAM hack may improve gaming on 4GB GPUs — testing showed mixed results in select titles, with FPS almost tripling in certain games

4GB Radeon RX 6500 XT GPU (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

YouTube tester NJ Tech has just shown that 4GB GPU users are not entirely left out of Valve's recent VRAM hack. Earlier this month, we covered a literal game-changing VRAM hack by Valve’s Natalie Vock for Linux gamers that lets you give priority to current gaming tasks. The hack fixes long-standing issues where gaming tasks are evicted from VRAM to make room for low-priority background tasks when VRAM is running low. The announcement focused on 8GB GPUs — understandably so, as most modern games are graphically demanding, requiring at least that much VRAM for high-visual-fidelity gaming.

However, this left 4GB GPU users wondering where they stood. At the time, it seemed like the options were: upgrade (for the love of God!), stick to older games (or lower graphics), or keep dealing with the visual glitches. Fortunately, YouTube gaming tech channel NJ tech demonstrated, through extensive testing with some recent gaming titles, that the options are not exhaustive — the VRAM hack does offer some improvement in 4GB GPU gaming, at least in terms of FPS in certain games at low graphics settings.

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FPS Performance Comparison: Valve VRAM Patch Enabled vs Disabled (4GB GPU)
Game Title	Settings	Avg. FPS: Patch Disabled \| Patch Enabled	1% Low FPS: Patch Disabled \| Patch Enabled
Alan Wake II	1080p Low, FSR Quality	14 \| 41	12 \| 28
Resident Evil: Requiem	1080p Lowest, Max Scaling	67 \| 68	36 \| 56
Silent Hill f	1080p Low, TAA	47 \| 50	34 \| 35
Hogwarts Legacy	1080p Medium, TAA High	60 \| 61	45 \| 47
Death Stranding 2	1080p Low, PICO Native	34 \| 34	28 \| 28
Cyberpunk 2077	1080p Low, High Texture, No Upscale	49 \| 49	40 \| 40

The results showed that the Valve VRAM hack may offer some benefits to 4GB GPUs in certain scenarios. Of course, we will need more testing to conclusively assess the benefits across a wide range of titles. However, it is safe to say that 4GB-GPU users are not entirely left out.

It's important to note that the hack does not reduce a game's VRAM usage; it just optimizes it, ensuring the game gets priority access to the space. If you run a title that requires at least 6 GB of VRAM on a 4 GB GPU, the patch ensures that the game doesn't have to compete with background system processes for the available 4 GB of memory. However, the remaining 2 GB will still spill into the system RAM.

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Etiido Uko is a news contributor for Tom's Hardware covering the latest updates in big tech and the PC industry. He is a mechanical engineer and senior technical writer with over nine years of experience in documentation and reporting. He is deeply passionate about all things engineering and technology, and is an expert in gadgets, manufacturing, robotics, automotive, and aerospace.

18 Comments Comment from the forums

heffeque

So... will this improve gaming performance on my system?
I have allocated 96 GB to VRAM... to play Dungeon Keeper.

In all seriousness, Valve's work to get games out of Windows and into Linux are immeasurable.
If we add their work to prevent enshittification (hence why they are being attacked by all sides, even by the Rothschild family), the Valve team have secured a VIP place in heaven.
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Kindaian

Because they break the status-quo, by making M$ redundant, which is an huge risk to their investment portfolios.
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BillyBuerger

Wait, 5600X + RX 6500XT... That's what I have. Although not the stock cooler on either. Ewww. I don't game much but have been playing around with some games on Linux with it. Would be nice if this could give a little more life to my setup.
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King_V

Both of the FPS in the table show "Avg FPS" - the rightmost one should say "1% Low FPS" or something similar.

EDIT: Kind of interesting for RE:Requiem, given that the FPS Average is practically unchanged, but the 1% lows get a huge boost, which should do wonders for smoothness of play.
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ezst036

Is it really a "hack" setting a priority for VRAM?

Linux doesn't hog memory like other OSs. Having that technical advantage means simply that the priority can in fact be there in the first instant.
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usertests

VideoCardz ignored the best results for some reason, Alan Wake II and RE: Requiem.

This article has the 1% Lows column labeled as Avg FPS.

King_V said:
EDIT: Kind of interesting for RE:Requiem, given that the FPS Average is practically unchanged, but the 1% lows get a huge boost, which should do wonders for smoothness of play.
That's not uncommon to see. 1% lows are representing the occasional stuttering caused by the VRAM being filled up and things being swapped around.
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mitch074

ezst036 said:
Is it really a "hack" setting a priority for VRAM?

Linux doesn't hog memory like other OSs. Having that technical advantage means simply that the priority can in fact be there in the first instant.
You could reach comparable results before through the use of a very lightweight desktop environment (DE) and closing all GUI apps before running a game i.e. remove most apps that competed with a game for the display.
Linux grants all GUI apps the same rights to VRAM; this "hack" is actually a way to prioritize one foreground app to VRAM usage above all others, meaning you can have many windows open and a heavy DE running and still your game will get most of the actual VRAM.
To my knowledge, Windows does something similar on apps that require exclusive, full-screen access, but the result is passive and not always reliable (thus why many games allow you to switch between full-screen and windowed borderless modes) while Linux pretty much ignores full-screen mode : it's all windowed borderless in practice.
This development's main advantage is actually to prevent RAM to VRAM swapping in tight VRAM scenarios; from what I understand, it's a mix of 'nice' and 'swappiness' but for the VRAM, and it requires several kernel patches, utilities running with systemd, and a compatible DE (KDE only for now). IT's quite involved and I'm not sure it will gain any traction in its current state.
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palladin9479

Wait wait, doesn't someone having a 4GB card cause a divide by zero error and cause a black hole to appear?
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VizzieTheViz

So isn’t this basically something that could benefit any GPU for gaming on Linux regardless of the amount om VRAM?

Off course cards with less VRAM will benefit more, but it should be better in any scenario where VRAM is full (for example a 12GB card running a resource heavy game at 4K) and there are processes competing for VRAM space.

Hopefully something like this can be baked into future versions instead of being a hack.
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usertests

VizzieTheViz said:
So isn’t this basically something that could benefit any GPU for gaming on Linux regardless of the amount om VRAM?

Off course cards with less VRAM will benefit more, but it should be better in any scenario where VRAM is full (for example a 12GB card running a resource heavy game at 4K) and there are processes competing for VRAM space.
Yes, and the same channel tested it on a 5700 XT 8 GB:

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From this previous article, Cyberpunk was able to use ~1300 MiB additional VRAM from other stuff being kicked out (like Blender going from 296 MiB to 2 MiB), and with several hundred less MiB slipping into GTT. The non-priority programs went to RAM instead, with Blender increasing from 26 MiB to 319 MiB in RAM.

The amount of improvement isn't easily quantifiable, since it's going to depend on the amount of crap you have running in the background. But if you're facing a VRAM constraint in a game, every bit counts.

Aside: This helps illustrate that while the rumored RTX 5050 9 GB may feel like a slap in the face, an extra gigabyte could make a difference. Even with this "hack", some programs might not be fully evicted from VRAM. And even if a game is targeting 8 GB VRAM for given resolution/quality settings, driver level features could tip the balance.

This kind of optimization is exactly what the 8 GB VRAM Steam Machine needs if it ever sees the light of day. But it could help any user. It doesn't look specific to games, so AI users on Linux could benefit.
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