Memory shortage? Use your unused VRAM!

Published: February 10, 2026 - Back to blog index

The current issues with specifically DDR4 and DDR5 availability, has people looking for alternatives. If you already own a GPU with lots of unused VRAM, and you're running Linux as well, you're in luck! In this video, I show you how to use a part of your VRAM as swap, so basically extra RAM! https://youtu.be/P8ny131bEoE.

This works surprisingly well! Even though VRAM has to travel through the PCI express bus, which is way slower than your actual RAM, the extra memory gained from this solution sure helps in situations where you just need a little bit of extra ram.

Obviously, if you need that VRAM for gaming, this won't help you much. Although you might not need all of your VRAM for the games you're playing?