Steam Machine devices suffer from a limited video RAM capacity of only 8 GB, which is a challenge facing many mid-range graphics cards such as the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060 Ti card, which is available at a price of $399. Although this capacity is considered sufficient to run most current games at 1080p resolution, players may have to reduce the level of graphic detail when running games that require large memory capacity. While NVIDIA is trying to solve this problem by compressing textures based on artificial intelligence techniques, Steam Machine devices may rely on a much simpler software trick to expand the graphic memory capacity available for games and significantly improve performance.
Natalie Fok, a software engineer who regularly collaborates with Valve, has developed a new software patch for the Linux operating system kernel that aims to modify the way graphics memory usage is prioritized. By default, Linux gives all programs the same priority, which means that common applications running in the background like web browsers, Steam, and Discord can quickly consume several gigabytes of graphics memory, which is very annoying when your graphics card’s memory is already limited. For example, the engineer explained that this random consumption leaves only 6.1 GB of space for a game like Cyberpunk 2077 instead of the 7.4 GB space that the game requires to run efficiently.
Because of this deficiency, the remaining data is transferred to regular RAM, which is much slower, which negatively affects the performance and smoothness of the game. To solve this problem, the new update places a protected mark on the graphic memory used by the game, so that the Linux system first transfers other application data to regular RAM and does not touch game data except as a last resort. This solution ensures that heavy games get enough graphic memory space to avoid any drop in performance, and although the update currently only works with graphics cards from AMD and Intel, it is expected to be fully compatible with the AMD graphics processing unit found in Steam Machine devices to provide a stutter-free gaming experience.
