High vram usage (700+ MiB )

Bugs / FRs / Support
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1

Hello, I realised when using nvidia-smi to monitor other vram usage that hyprland uses about 750 MiB of vram. From what I understand this seems to be pretty high, are there ways I can troubleshoot this ?

Here’s my system info :

Hyprland 0.50.1 built from branch  at commit 4e242d086e20b32951fdc0ebcbfb4d41b5be8dcc  ([gha] Nix: update inputs).
Date: Sat Jul 19 21:37:06 2025
Tag: v0.50.1, commits: 6291
built against:
 aquamarine 0.9.2
 hyprlang 0.6.3
 hyprutils 0.8.1
 hyprcursor 0.1.12
 hyprgraphics 0.1.5


no flags were set


System Information:
System name: Linux
Node name: poseidon
Release: 6.16.4-arch1-1
Version: #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:49:53 +0000


GPU information: 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation GA102 [GeForce RTX 3080] [10de:2206] (rev a1) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
08:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Cezanne [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] [1002:1638] (rev c9) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
NVRM version: NVIDIA UNIX Open Kernel Module for x86_64  580.82.07  Release Build  (root@)  


os-release: NAME="Arch Linux"
PRETTY_NAME="Arch Linux"
ID=arch
BUILD_ID=rolling
ANSI_COLOR="38;2;23;147;209"
HOME_URL="https://archlinux.org/"
DOCUMENTATION_URL="https://wiki.archlinux.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://bbs.archlinux.org/"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://gitlab.archlinux.org/groups/archlinux/-/issues"
PRIVACY_POLICY_URL="https://terms.archlinux.org/docs/privacy-policy/"
LOGO=archlinux-logo
2

if there are a bunch of windows open, it sounds normal. It’s worth noting gpu drivers often lazy free the vram, so it’s “taken”, but if anything else needs it, it will drop.

3

I see, I only had like 3 windows open (No Man’s Sky, Firefox, and Vesktop). Is it still normal ? It also kinda hindered my performance with No Man’s Sky (despite having a 3080 it’s still down to 700 MiB :sweat_smile: )

4

sounds normal tbh. Worth noting a bunch of this is shared vram.

5

As in, normal RAM ? Because since I’m on Nvidia every bit of vram used is fully coming from the gpu sadly

6

That’s the case for all dedicated GPUs, they only use system RAM if they are integrated GPUs. Vaxry means VRAM that is shared between processes.