How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

Amanda S · 2014-05-26 10:38:38

There's a bug in some Valve titles that will cause your frames to drop from normal (60, 100, 200, 300) to 10, making the game unplayable. According to many sources, this happens when the video memory usage reaches 100% (it's a BUG, as many people who experience this has more than 2 GB of video RAM) and stays there for a little. This bug is old, probably older than Steam is on Linux. I remember having it in 2012 when Steam for Linux just came out of closed BETA, and it still isn't fixed. Seems like neither Valve nor Nvidia want to solve this, and they HAVE been reported of this issue.

How can I limit my VGA RAM usage to 99? If there's such a thing. I could only find articles related to regular RAM, not video RAM.

I already tried the legacy drivers (some of them actually worked back in 2013, but I don't remember which exactly); my BIOS is set in such a way that no cpu scaling kernel module can work (thus keeping my cpu clock to max); my xorg.conf contains a line which makes the powermizer on nvidia to be always on maximum performance.

On Team Fortress 2 I can play with every video setting maxed out if I keep Multicore Rendering off. But on Left 4 Dead 2 that doesn't work, my frames/second still drop from +100 to 10.

System specs:

AMD Athlon II X2 250 @3.6 GHz
4 GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance @1600 Mhz - 9-9-9-24
MSI 9800GT (I'm using the current drivers)
ASRock N68 VS3 UCC V2

http://steamcommunity.com/app/223530/di … 611876442/

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam- … issues/140

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topi … 18-driver/

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source … /issues/23

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Source … issues/465

Last edited by Amanda S (2014-05-26 11:07:50)

Amanda S · 2014-06-24 16:44:04

Up.

kokoko3k · 2014-06-24 18:53:02

I don't think this is possible, but don't you think that limiting the ram to a lower value would just make the thing worse?
You would just hit the limit sooner

Last edited by kokoko3k (2014-06-24 18:53:40)

R00KIE · 2014-06-24 20:48:12

Look here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/swap_on_video_ram.

It shows how to limit the amount of usable vram, I'm not sure if it will help though.

ewaller · 2014-06-24 21:22:39

Please, do not bump threads. These are active forums, if someone did not answer, bumps are not likely to help. Feel free to provide more information, or tell us what you have discovered while researching the problem as a means for stimulating a thread.

Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-05-26 10:38:38

How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

#2 2014-06-24 16:44:04

Re: How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

#3 2014-06-24 18:53:02

Re: How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

#4 2014-06-24 20:48:12

Re: How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

#5 2014-06-24 21:22:39

Re: How to limit the VRAM usage to 99%?

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