Hello fellow FW desktoppers!
I’m using my FW desktop as my primary gaming machine (it’s surprisingly good at it!) but I’d like some advice from the community to get the best performance.
My question to you all is, should I allocate RAM to the igpu in the BIOS, or leave it as Auto? I’m seeing usage of up to 9gb VRAM in steam games, and I currently have 32GB of 64GB set.
Thanks!
What’s the total available VRAM when you set 32 or 64GB in BIOS? If the VRAM usage is only 9GB it’s just because the game only requires 9GB VRAM to run
Steam says 9GB/32GB, so it is recognising the BIOS change. It’s more about whether 32GB is overkill and I’d be better off increasing the available RAM for the OS (which is also 32GB)
Sorry, just to add, as I think perhaps I worded my post poorly! I’m happy that steam and games can use up to 32GB, I was just noting that so far I’d only seen 9GB usage whilst gaming
in summary there are conflicting reports out there as to whether we should be setting the igpu RAM at all, or just leave it as Auto
Most games don’t use more than 16GB of VRAM, the 32/64/96GB VRAM is for local AI
That’s fair. Just tried a game and there’s no noticeable difference in performance.
I’m interested in any opinions on whether I should simply be leaving it on ‘Auto’ in the BIOS though!
In the BIOS setting, it says:
Auto: Allocate ?GB(depends on computer model) to GPU if system memory is below ?GB, else ?GB
Gaming: Allocate ?GB to GPU if system memory is between ?-? GB. ? GB if system memory is ? GB and above.
Since the RAM on Framework Desktop is soldered, Auto means a fixed value
How much VRAM you need depends on the game you are playing, the settings in game you are using, and how big your monitor is. If you’re playing games at 4K resolution it is very easy to max out a 16GB frame buffer in modern titles. Of course in those scenarios you’re probably running into GPU compute limits.
As I recall, Windows is just stupid and doesn’t know how to automatically load balance a shared memory pool. It doesn’t even know what it is. Which is why people recommend manually setting limits for windows. Whereas in Linux it is smart enough to dynamically allocate as little or as much as needed
Thanks for the insightful answer.
I probably should have mentioned that I’m running Fedora 43. A Microslop OS will never touch this machine!