Linux 7.3 improves performance when running out of vRAM
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
Linux 7.3 improves VRAM overcommit performance and stability for games.
The author describes improvements to VRAM overcommit in Linux 7.3, focusing on performance and stability. When VRAM is exhausted, memory is evicted to CPU RAM, but PCIe bandwidth limits data transfer to ~32GB/s (PCIe 4.0x16), constraining performance. Cache-friendly accesses can mitigate latency. A kernel deadlock bug in TTM, caused by improper locking during eviction, was fixed to prevent crashes. However, ping-pong buffer evictions between competing processes still degrade performance, partly due to display hardware requiring contiguous physical VRAM for scanout images.
The 7.3 kernel patches, merged after mailing list work, address these issues to make VRAM overcommit more usable for gaming.
What commenters are saying
Commenters praised the article's clarity and the author's kernel work. One noted enthusiasm proportional to the author's 28 exclamation marks. A split emerged: some celebrated Linux gaming improvements versus Windows updates, while others defended Windows Insider updates. Performance tips included using phoronix.com for news and avoiding its forums. For compute workloads (LLM inference), commenters doubted relevance, noting games' unpredictable VRAM usage differs from model layers. One commenter on Arch Linux reported recent update breakages, countered by others saying Arch is not for average users.