Program visually unresponsive when Vram useage is high

Hiya!
Been having an issue while playing games where while a resource intensive game is running, some programs freeze and become visually unresponse, i specify visually as from audio clues i can tell my clicks are registering, but visually nothing changes, from testing multiple games ive noticed this occurs when my Vram is high (my GPU has 4096MiB, anytime it approaches 4000+ this happens). Is there anything I can do to prevent this, or is it a case of my gpu finally not being good enough? (though i will note this only became an issue once i switched over to Fedora very recently, my bet is it being a Wayland issue as my last distro was X11)

If i close and reopen the application while the game is still running and Vram is still high then it reopens with the window transparent and only the top bar rendered
Some system information:
OS: Fedora 41
DE: KDE Plasma 6.2.5
WM: Wayland
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4GiB
Graphics Drivers: 565.77
RAM: 24GiB

If any more information is needed im happy to provide!
Thank you! :slight_smile:

1 Like

Some time back I broke down and purchased an nvidia 3050 with 8G vram for the exact problem you are having.

If you have the xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda package installed the nvidia-smi command will provide some detailed info about the card and usage (including programs using that card and the vram used for each).

$ nvidia-smi
Fri Jan 17 20:09:31 2025       
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 565.77                 Driver Version: 565.77         CUDA Version: 12.7     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050        Off |   00000000:06:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 36%   61C    P2             93W /  130W |    2715MiB /   8192MiB |     90%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
                                                                                         
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      2700      G   /usr/bin/gnome-shell                          260MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2802      G   /usr/bin/Xwayland                               3MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2981    C+G   /usr/bin/ptyxis                                28MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A    998065      G   ...seed-version=20250114-180129.242000        229MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A   2300392      G   ...libexec/gnome-remote-desktop-daemon          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A   2645120      C   ...64-pc-linux-gnu__GW-opencl-nvidia-2       2050MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

yea been using nvidia-smi to track the vram and its 100% that which is causing it, heres an nvidia-smi output of the moment elite dangerous made me pass 4000, at which point the applications, like clockwork, stopped:

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 565.77                 Driver Version: 565.77         CUDA Version: 12.7     |
|-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti     Off |   00000000:26:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| 45%   43C    P0             N/A /   75W |    4012MiB /   4096MiB |     97%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
                                                                                         
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                              GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A      2214      G   /usr/bin/kwin_wayland                         112MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2303      G   /usr/bin/maliit-keyboard                       59MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2312      G   /usr/bin/Xwayland                               1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2360      G   /usr/bin/ksmserver                              1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2363      G   /usr/bin/kded6                                  1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2392      G   /usr/bin/plasmashell                          184MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2418      G   /usr/libexec/kactivitymanagerd                  1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2440      G   /usr/bin/gmenudbusmenuproxy                     1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2441      G   /usr/bin/kaccess                                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2442      G   ...6/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2443      G   /usr/libexec/org_kde_powerdevil                 1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2444      G   /usr/libexec/xdg-desktop-portal-kde             1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2446      G   /usr/bin/xembedsniproxy                         1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2572      G   /usr/bin/kdeconnectd                            1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2682      G   /usr/bin/openrgb                                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2720      G   /usr/bin/xwaylandvideobridge                    1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2765      G   /usr/libexec/DiscoverNotifier                   1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2766      G   /usr/bin/kalendarac                             1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2840      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_control                        1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2966      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_archivemail_agent              1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2967      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_birthdays_resource             1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2968      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_contacts_resource              1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2969      G   .../bin/akonadi_followupreminder_agent          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2970      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_ical_resource                  1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2971      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_indexing_agent                 1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2972      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_maildir_resource               1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2973      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_maildispatcher_agent           1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2974      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_mailfilter_agent               1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2975      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_mailmerge_agent                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2976      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_migration_agent                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2977      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_newmailnotifier_agent          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2978      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_sendlater_agent                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      2979      G   /usr/bin/akonadi_unifiedmailbox_agent           1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3110      G   /usr/lib64/firefox/firefox                    153MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3233      G   ...yOnDemand --variations-seed-version         64MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3613      G   ...bin/plasma-browser-integration-host          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      3872      G   ...local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32/steam          1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4193      G   ./steamwebhelper                               33MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4219    C+G   ....local/share/Steam/logs/cef_log.txt          4MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      4938      G   /usr/bin/konsole                                1MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A      5296    C+G   ...ous-odyssey-64\EliteDangerous64.exe       3249MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

So its just a case of how wayland reacts to max Vram then, and I need to upgrade my gpu?

I have same issue with 6GB VRAM. Does it still happen with native games (no proton/wine)?