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Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

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Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#131

Post by MBCook »

ggus wrote: post #74
krisknez wrote: post #34

I hope there will be an update where when my RAM gets full my PC doesn't freeze and becomes unusable... I remember that Linux and Windows do this in different ways and Windows doesn't have the problem.

macOS too sadly. by the time you realise there's a problem the machine is already comatose and unresponsive all these electron apps and invisible virtual machines (looking at you Claude) really don't help.

Macs are also real bad at handling low disk space. I don’t how other OSes do but the best advice on a Mac is to always have a decent amount free.

What’s a decent amount? No idea. Don’t test it :)

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#132

Post by anonymars »

vctrnk wrote: post #124
dormento wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Windows doesn't have the problem Maybe not in the same way then. Anyways, you've unlocked an old memory of mine, where Windows would crap itself due to low RAM and the fonts and interface elements would render in a "compatible" way, like using "fixedsys" font everywhere.

Whoa, now that's a trip down the lane. I've seen it too! But only in veeery old Windows, think Win95B or the like.

It happens sometimes, even in the present day: almost certainly it means something leaked and hit 9999 GDI objects (or user objects?) -- you can add those columns in task manager. Killing the offending process should fix it

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#133

Post by exceptione »

sfn42 wrote: post #125
exceptione wrote: post #14

Great article! I share the same hunch as the author does; when allocating memory ultimately the application itself is in the best position to inform the kernel about the desired stickiness to VRAM. The best a kernel can do is guessing . As a side note, it strikes me how much we owe to young trans people for low level performance engineering.

I imagine "we" "owe" a lot more to young men or just men in general for the same, but I guess there's no virtue signaling points to be harvested from making that observation.

It seems my praise was hurting you. Let me praise some people from an unrelated project: we owe a lot to the greybeards keeping Scribus alive. And you are right, we owe a lot to all kinds of people.

To quote myself from another comment: «I am inclined to rather point out remarkable things than unremarkable things. There seems to be relatively many trans people in this niche.» That's all. I didn't know this required a trigger warning.

  > virtue signaling points
I didn't know about them but you do. Can I sell them to you?

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#134

Post by qwertox »

krisknez wrote: post #34

I hope there will be an update where when my RAM gets full my PC doesn't freeze and becomes unusable... I remember that Linux and Windows do this in different ways and Windows doesn't have the problem.

Windows does freeze when a Chromium-based browser decides to hug the pc.

Chrome/Vivaldi are the only browsers where, when i have a long HN page open, when i resize it, my laptop freezes for like a minute. Not a full freeze, the mouse still moves, but like it's the year 1999 with a refresh rate of 4 seconds.

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#135

Post by ATMLOTTOBEER »

krisknez wrote: post #34

I hope there will be an update where when my RAM gets full my PC doesn't freeze and becomes unusable... I remember that Linux and Windows do this in different ways and Windows doesn't have the problem.

Totally fixable w a little configuration (ask Claude)

But yeah it’s completely ridiculous and frustrating that the default is to just lock up your DE

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#136

Post by anonymars »

alt227 wrote: post #46
PunchyHamster wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

....No. And those were not good days, unless your definition is fun is reinstalling OS

Back when updates were add on packs like Plus! they were very exciting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Plus !

The days when updates used to add things instead of taking them away!

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#137

Post by trompetenaccoun »

NekkoDroid wrote: post #87
krisknez wrote: post #34

I hope there will be an update where when my RAM gets full my PC doesn't freeze and becomes unusable... I remember that Linux and Windows do this in different ways and Windows doesn't have the problem.

For me Windows becomes unusable as soon as any of my drives is being hammered, including when it is swapping, but not limited to it.

It's such a strange issue which existed in Windows for ages, even though on the surface it seems like it would be easy to fix.

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#138

Post by nickjj »

vlovich123 wrote: post #83
nickjj wrote: post #36

This post focuses on performance, but what about crashing due to apps seeing no RAM available to allocate once VRAM is filled up? I remember having this problem when I used an NVIDIA 750 Ti with 2 GB of memory. Just opening a few Firefox or Ghostty terminals (both are GPU accelerated) would result in those apps crashing or not being able to render their contents. Sometimes the compositor would crash or become unstabl…

I have this problem with an 8gib 2080. Nvidia drivers have bugs with Wayland or Vulkan which is at least partially a memory leak. Here’s one for example: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/kwin-6-7-x-causes-mass... Just search KWin Nvidia memory leak or Wayland Nvidia memory leak or kwin wayland Nvidia memory leak. It’s constantly issues and I remain convinced some intermixing of the two + monitors is at fault.

Yep, there's also a 3+ year old multi-response thread here: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/non-existent-shared-vr...

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#139

Post by nickjj »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #62
nickjj wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swap doesn't help in this case. It's GPU drivers freaking out when they run out of VRAM, but it might only be specific to NVIDIA cards since AMD seems to handle this better. But, if it's driver specific that means it could be fixed at the kernel level I suppose, especially since Windows handles it seamlessly?

Can you explain a little more please. I thought that graphics processing would revert to CPU if the GPU is maxed out and so swap might ultimately help? Is there no general GPU-swap mechanism? If CPU threads are competing for GPU resource does the GPU getting paged-out? I suppose this could be an historic thing, GPUs can have a type of DMA now, and disk access is much faster too, so paging perhaps makes sense when it…

The linked post in the original comment at https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/gpu-memory-allocation-bugs-wi... has a lot of details.

AMD's GPU do use system memory seamlessly as a fallback, but NVIDIA's don't, at least not back in January 2026. Hundreds of people reported it in their forums too, or variations of the problem.

Re: Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM

#140

Post by nickjj »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #58
nickjj wrote: post #36

This post focuses on performance, but what about crashing due to apps seeing no RAM available to allocate once VRAM is filled up? I remember having this problem when I used an NVIDIA 750 Ti with 2 GB of memory. Just opening a few Firefox or Ghostty terminals (both are GPU accelerated) would result in those apps crashing or not being able to render their contents. Sometimes the compositor would crash or become unstabl…

It's got to be an edge case for Wayland to be used with a 2GB VRAM card? Targeting recent cards and letting people using older hardware install x-windows, or whatever, seems sensible. You say (in your blog post) "Linux" didn't work well so you reverted to "Windows", but as is so often the case you buried the distro/version info. You don't seem to have been using Win11 (later you mention Win7 & Win10Pro) ... So it's c…

> You say (in your blog post) "Linux" didn't work well so you reverted to "Windows", but as is so often the case you buried the distro/version info.

Not sure what you mean. The post directly mentions I'm using Arch and was using the official drivers from NVIDIA (the latest at the time). I also didn't switch back to Windows. Although now the experience is much better with an AMD card. Totally worth the switch.

As for 2 GB on Wayland, I think it affects other cards too, but a low GB card feels it more. If you have 8-16 GB of VRAM you might not ever notice it's a problem since you have enough of a buffer to open up many more things.

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