I tried to try llms but my 4GB VRAM is just not at all enough, what’s the minimum you need in your opinion?
For just using Wayland, 4GB should be fine. I’m using, uh, 801M right now, and it doesn’t change that much. I think I’ve seen it get over 1GB, not to 2GB.
For current 3D games, yeah, I agree, 4GB is very much not enough. If I were getting a card to play 3D games on in 2025, I’d probably aim for 16 GB. Could live with 12GB. 8GB is IMHO not what I would go with for PC gaming in 2025. Lots of stuff can run, but games might need to have texture resolution turned down or something.
For LLM stuff, the sky is the limit. I mean, right now, I have image generation models on my computer that will blow past that, need to live partially in main memory. And I can certainly do things, like generation of images at the full resolution of my screen without upscaling using more-memory-intensive models that will exhaust 24GB of VRAM.
If you’re running into problems with 4GB just running normal Wayland apps, something is wrong.
kagis
I see several people using Nvidia GPUs claiming that various scenarios cause their VRAM to be consumed under Wayland. I’m using an AMD GPU on sway myself, so maybe that could be a factor.
This is talking about reports of two separate problems that Nvidia is working on related to VRAM usage under wayland. The guy here, one of the NVidia Linux driver guys, is working on one, says that there’s a manual fix for one of them, Wayland compositors using a lot of VRAM, and gives it in his comment.
He also says that there are reports of some other issue with Xwayland apps (X11 apps running under Wayland) using a lot of memory, and he hasn’t been able to identify that problem.
He made that post nine months ago, so I’d think that they may have rolled the fix he was talking about out to users. I do see several users saying that the manual fix solved their issue at the above links.
For just using Wayland, 4GB should be fine. I’m using, uh, 801M right now, and it doesn’t change that much. I think I’ve seen it get over 1GB, not to 2GB.
For current 3D games, yeah, I agree, 4GB is very much not enough. If I were getting a card to play 3D games on in 2025, I’d probably aim for 16 GB. Could live with 12GB. 8GB is IMHO not what I would go with for PC gaming in 2025. Lots of stuff can run, but games might need to have texture resolution turned down or something.
For LLM stuff, the sky is the limit. I mean, right now, I have image generation models on my computer that will blow past that, need to live partially in main memory. And I can certainly do things, like generation of images at the full resolution of my screen without upscaling using more-memory-intensive models that will exhaust 24GB of VRAM.
If you’re running into problems with 4GB just running normal Wayland apps, something is wrong.
kagis
I see several people using Nvidia GPUs claiming that various scenarios cause their VRAM to be consumed under Wayland. I’m using an AMD GPU on sway myself, so maybe that could be a factor.
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/multiple-wayland-compositors-not-freeing-vram-after-resizing-windows/307939/12
https://github.com/NVIDIA/egl-wayland/issues/126#issuecomment-2379945259
This is talking about reports of two separate problems that Nvidia is working on related to VRAM usage under wayland. The guy here, one of the NVidia Linux driver guys, is working on one, says that there’s a manual fix for one of them, Wayland compositors using a lot of VRAM, and gives it in his comment.
He also says that there are reports of some other issue with Xwayland apps (X11 apps running under Wayland) using a lot of memory, and he hasn’t been able to identify that problem.
He made that post nine months ago, so I’d think that they may have rolled the fix he was talking about out to users. I do see several users saying that the manual fix solved their issue at the above links.