Steam Machine could use 8 GB VRAM more effectively

Just like the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti ($399 on Amazon), the Steam Machine only has 8 GB of graphics memory. This is enough to play most current games in 1,080p resolution, but the level of detail may have to be reduced for particularly memory-intensive games. While Nvidia tries to solve the problem with AI-compressed textures, the Steam Machine could use a much simpler trick to expand the graphics memory available for games.

Natalie Vock, a software engineer who regularly works with Valve, has developed a kernel patch that adjusts Linux's graphics memory prioritization. By default, Linux gives every program the same priority, which means that common background apps such as Steam, a web browser and Discord can quickly take up several gigabytes of graphics memory - annoying if the VRAM of your own graphics card is already limited. In the engineer's example, only 6.1 GB of graphics memory remains for Cyberpunk 2077 instead of the required 7.4 GB.

The rest is outsourced to the much slower RAM, which has a negative impact on the game's performance. A kernel patch marks the graphics memory used by a game as "protected" so that Linux first swaps out other apps to the regular RAM and only redistributes the game data last. In this example, this means that Cyberpunk 2077 receives sufficient VRAM so that performance does not drop due to memory limitations. The patch currently only works with AMD and Intel graphics cards, and should therefore also be compatible with the AMD GPU of the Steam Machine. Further details on the technical background can be found in a blog post at PixelCluster.