Valve developer Natalie Vock has created patches for the Linux kernel and KDE Plasma to improve gaming performance on systems with limited vRAM (around 8GB). The work includes DRM device memory cgroup controller support, TTM memory management changes, and two new user-space packages: dmemcg-booster (a systemd service) and plasma-foreground-booster. Together, these ensure foreground games get priority access to dedicated video memory before background apps, reducing spilling to system memory. The solution is currently available via CachyOS, with hopes for upstream inclusion in the Linux kernel and official KDE packages. A detailed blog post covers the technical implementation and results running Cyberpunk 2077 via Steam Play on an 8GB vRAM GPU.
Sort: