A new change to the Intel Mesa graphics driver was pushed yesterday. The change relaxes a restriction on the amount of system memory (RAM) allocated to processes for the Vulkan system heap. In other words, more games and applications will be able to work properly with integrated Intel graphics without running into limited RAM-related issues.

While the restrictions have been loosened a little, there is an element of caution, as you could now run the risk of other issues if the memory is put under too much pressure.

Intel Linux graphics driver is now less restrictive with RAM

The prior RAM restriction may have affected you if you’re working with integrated graphics, rather than using a discrete GPU like Intel’s latest-gen Arc B580 graphics card. A restriction has been in place for the past eight years that forces a 50% limit. But now, a recent code change reinstates a 75% limit of RAM for the system heap with the Intel ANC Vulkan driver. According to a merge request from over a year ago, this has been discussed for some time.

“Unfortunately we can’t make everyone happy, but my main motivation here is that certain workloads can actually work with my system, and the only thing stopping them from working is this restriction is we inflict in ourselves. Examples: Deathloop on 16GB TGL, certain graphics settings of Spider-Man Remastered on my 16GB non-upgradeable-RAM LNL, Renderdoc.

Of course, this always brings the risk that running too many things at once may awake the OOM monster, but IMHO, completely preventing certain workloads from working is too high of a price to pay in a situation where you can just use /usr/bin/kill something. Still, I’m open to discussion here. We don’t need to apply all patches in the series.”

Paulo Zanoni, Intel Linux graphics driver engineer

As seen above, Zanoni suggests that the so-called “out of memory monster” may be a problem if you push it too far, but it makes more sense to work around it accordingly rather than simply adding a hard restriction, which comes with its own problems. Zanoni gives a few examples, such as running Death Stranding on an Intel Tiger Lake system with 16GB, as well as certain graphics settings of Spider-Man Remastered on a 16GB Lunar Lake machine, which offers no room to upgrade the memory.

The full details of the patch can be found here, where Zanoni talks about a previous 50% limit. They note that “the user always has the option to kill applications and use one thing at a time,” adding that “This commit is especially useful in systems with integrated graphics”.

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Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.