Linux 7.3 was released on October 18, 2026, with a reported memory-management change intended to help gaming on AMD GPUs with limited VRAM, XDA Developers reported. The change concerns how the kernel manages memory under pressure; it does not add physical VRAM or promise a fixed frame-rate gain.
What changes when a game runs short of VRAM
When a game requests more graphics memory than a GPU has, some resources can be moved from VRAM to system RAM. The GPU then accesses those resources over PCIe. Natalie Vock, a Valve graphics engineer, describes how memory eviction under pressure can cause repeated transfers between applications or, in some cases, a failed GPU submission.
In her technical account, Vock describes a TTM eviction path where a lock conflict could make a submission fail instead of using the drm_exec wound-abort-retry mechanism. She also describes eviction heuristics intended to reduce repeated memory movement and to evict lower-priority allocations first. Those details explain the broader work she discussed; XDA’s account of Linux 7.3 describes a low-VRAM memory-management change without specifying every component.
Vock’s game tests at two memory settings
Vock reported tests of Indiana Jones: The Great Circle on a system with 8 GiB of VRAM. At a 9 GiB request, the game exceeded that capacity by 1 GiB. At a 10 GiB request, the overcommit was 2 GiB.
| Game setting | Requested VRAM | Physical VRAM | Overcommit | Reported average frame time | Other reported observation |
| Streaming-pool setting | 9 GiB | 8 GiB | 1 GiB | 19.6 ms | Vock described the result as playable. |
| Higher setting | 10 GiB | 8 GiB | 2 GiB | 29.8 ms | Frequent spikes above 33.3 ms. |
The higher memory request coincided with a longer average frame time and frequent spikes. These are Vock’s observations from her game tests, not a universal prediction for AMD GPUs or a guaranteed result from Linux 7.3.
Check an AMD GPU’s reported VRAM
The AMDGPU driver reports total available VRAM in bytes through /sys/class/drm/cardX/device/mem_info_vram_total. Replace cardX with the directory for the actual device. The AMDGPU documentation describes this sysfs value.
Vock said the work described in her post was in SteamOS Stable and Preview, and that upstreaming all of it would take time. Her account distinguishes that broader work from the low-VRAM change XDA reported in Linux 7.3.
