Guess what, GPU prices are about to go back up because they rely on RAM.
this post was submitted on 28 Nov 2025
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Just buy an extra GPU and figure out how to turn it's VRAM into regular RAM. 😌
I know you can create a gpu ram disk so you could use it as swap lol.
Ok, I have to know: how is this done, and what do people use it for?
It uses a github repo that hasn't been updated in 3 years and it's more of a gimmick but it's a fun weekend project.
https://github.com/Overv/vramfs
Oh, it's a user space (FUSE) driver. I was rather hoping it was an out-of-tree Linux kernel driver, since using FUSE will: 1) always pass back to userspace, which costs performance, and 2) destroys any possibility of DMA-enabled memory operations (DPDK is a possible exception). I suppose if the only objective was to store files in VRAM, this does technically meet that, but it's leaving quite a lot on the table, IMO.
If this were a kernel module, the filesystem performance would presumably improve, limited by how the VRAM is exposed by OpenCL (ie very fast if it's just all mapped into PCIe). And if it was basically offering VRAM as PCIe memory, then this potentially means the VRAM can be used for certain RAM niche cases, like hugepages: some applications need large quantities of memory, plus a guarantee that it won't be evicted from RAM, and whose physical addresses can be resolved from userspace (eg DPDK, high-performance compute). If such a driver could offer special hugepages which are backed by VRAM, then those application could benefit.
And at that point, on systems where the PCIe address space is unified with the system address space (eg x86), then it's entirely plausible to use VRAM as if it were hot-insertable memory, because both RAM and VRAM would occupy known regions within the system memory address space, and the existing MMU would control which processes can access what parts of PCIe-mapped-VRAM.
Is it worth re-engineering the Linux kernel memory subsystem to support RAM over PCIe? Uh, who knows. Though I've always like the thought of DDR on PCIe cards. All technologies are doomed to reinvent PCIe, I think, said someone from Level1Techs.
This is such an incredible write up of something I've never even considered to exist. Thank you!
I'd love to have things like that in a form of a post at !graybeard@lemmy.cafe
The article introduction is gold:
In the unlikely case that you have very little RAM and a surplus of video RAM, you can use the latter as swap.
GPU prices are coming to earth
https://lemmy.today/post/42588975
Nvidia reportedly no longer supplying VRAM to its GPU board partners in response to memory crunch — rumor claims vendors will only get the die, forced to source memory on their own
If that's true, I doubt that they're going to be coming to earth for long.
Have to refill before being sent to titan.
Where are gpu prices coming down? 5070ti is what 800? 3090 24gb is 800-900 still. They not coming down anytime soon.
Yup. Bs headline.
This is very unfortunate, about a year ago I built my PC and only put in 32 GB of Ram, It was double I had on my laptop so I thought it should be enough for the beginning and I could buy more later.
Already after 2 months I realizes I can do so much more because of the fast CPU in parallel but suddenly the amount of RAM became the bottleneck. When I looked at the RAM prices it didn't seem quite worth it and I waited. But that backfired because since then the prices never went down, only up.
What are you running that needs more than 32Gb? I'm only just barely being bottlenecked by my 24Gb when running games at 4k
Chrome probably
Two browsers full of tabs but that is not a problem, but once I start compiling AOSP (which I sometimes want to do for work at home instead in the cloud because it's easier and faster to debugg) then it eats up all the RAM imediatelly and I have to give it 40 more GB or swap and then this swapping is the bottleneck. Once that is running the computer can't really do anything else, even the browser struggles.
Have you tried just compiling it with fewer threads? Would almost certainly reduce the RAM usage, and might even make the compile go faster if it you're needing to swap that heavily
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AI or servers probably. I have 40gb and that's what I would need more ram for.
I'm still salty because I had the idea of going cpu & ram sticks for AI inference literally days before the big AI companies. And my stupid ass didn't buy them in time before the prices skyrocketed. Fuck me I guess.
It does work, but it's not really fast. I upgraded to 96gb ddr4 from 32gb a year or so ago, and being able to play with the bigger models was fun, but it's not something I could do anything productive with it was so slow.
Your bottle necked by memory bandwidth
You need ddr5 with lots of memory channels for it to he useful
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I just had a look, 2nd of April I payed 67,000 KRW for one 16 GB stick, now the same one (XPG DDR5 PC5-48000 CL30 LANCER BLADE White), they only sell them in pairs, a pair costs 470,000 KRW in the same shop, so 235,000 KRW per 16 GB stick. That is a price increase of 250%, god damn.
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Not for long, GPU partners will have to source their own VRAM for manufacturing Nvidia now.
I hope this is the beginning of the end for the cuda monopoly. I just want good gpgpu support for numerical code.
... I was thinking about buying a 96GB DDR5 kit from the local computer store a few weeks ago, but wasn't sure it was actually worth €700. Checked again now and the exact same product costs €1500. I guess that settles it, 32GB will have to be enough for the next couple of years then.
Iv come to learn over the years. If you want to buy computer parts just do it.
Your actively stupid if you don't cause some bigger idiot with more money then brains will make a new grift that causes everything to be unaffordable.
Fuck waiting for deals, fuck thinking twice. Just fucking buy it and ignore reality around you cause you will be pissed either way.
Either a deal comes and you fucked yourself, or everything goes to the moon and now you have nothing AND your fucked.
Part of it the thrill of the hunt. I've caught some great deals over the years stalking marketplace.
Got .iso storage after chia crashed
Got a 3090 after Bitcoin asics took over
Got a 5900x when the X3D parts came out
But I've never seen decent RAM for sale, only single sticks or slow kits.
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I just wanted to test if it was viable to run larger MoE LLMs on CPU, e.g. Qwen3-next-80B-A3B.. Even if I got acceptable generation speeds I'd probably get bored with it after a few hours, as with other local models. Had I got it for €700 it was pretty low value for money anyway, since my current RAM is enough for everything else I use the computer for. On the positive side, I can put that money towards a Steam Frame instead.
So.... the models are all trained up and now they need to run them is what I'm reading.
You need lots of vram to train a model.
An llm once trained can be run in much less vram and a lot of ram
Buying used RAM on marketplace and hoping it isn’t broken. Hoping it was just stolen from a Best Buy. Fingers crossed y’all!
I just recently bought a Samsung 16GB 5600MT/s stick for 45€ and received a 32GB stick instead! Sorry, but I wanted to brag x)
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Serious question: when will ram prices go down?
When AI dies.
Gamers Nexus did a piece on this, but short of a crash or bubble pop, it's not expected to recover any time soon.
I think a bubble pop may be closer than people think. Several F500 company CEOs are at least calling it a bubble now, but admittedly still 100% on board the AI hype train.
Never. Same with GPUs. AI destroyed jobs, the gaming market, and customer service
prices go down?
That's not very capitalism.
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I just bought an Arc A310 for <$200. I couldn't find a set of 16x2 DDR4 in stock for less than that on Black Friday... Wild times for the RAM market.
Prebuilts have become about the only way to get a deal for a while now.
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Jam it right in my ass!
You mean 'ram' it?
Oh I like you you can come over and fuck my wife.
Well that settles my idea of entertaining AM5.
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