Make high demanding for video memory (VRAM) games like Half Life Alyx run without a stutter via Oculus Link
Short summary: When Oculus link is enabled for Quest 2 and SteamVR is launched overall VRAM consumption is 3 GB out of 8 on my GTX 1070. As a result Half Life Alyx is left with only 5 GB of VRAM which is OK to play the game on the medium settings. But 3 GB consumed by Oculus + SteamVR is too much. Any extra app launched like Google Chrome consuming 0.5 GB of VRAM leads to a stutter in Half Life Alyx.
Therefore, please optimize Oculus software for VRAM usage.
Details
Case1: Oculus link is enabled + SteamVR + Google Chrome are running.
Total VRAM consumption is 3.8 GB which doesn't leave enough room to comfortably run Half Life Alyx.
Screenshot ProcessExplorer1.png shows details of VRAM usage of Oculus software.
Screenshot TaskManager1.png taken at the same time shows overall VRAM usage.
The most VRAM demanding processes are:
OVRServer_x64.exe
OculusDash.exe
OculusClient.exe
Case 2: Oculus Link is enabled + Google Chrome. SteamVR has been closed.
VRAM consumption reaches 3.1 GB
Please take a look at the corresponding screenshots ProcessExplorer2.png and TaskManager2.png.
I think it'll be very beneficial for the Oculus Team to optimize VRAM usage because of the following:
1. Given that newly introduced mainstream GPUs from nVidia of 3000 series don't have more than 10 GB of VRAM (RTX 3060 Ti has just 8 GB) buying a new GPU might not improve the overall VR experience greatly when using Oculus Link because of extensive VRAM consumption.
2. As Oculus is phasing out Rift-S and making the Quest its primary headset for both standalone and tethered VR VRAM usage reduction will definitely result in increased user satisfaction because the users will be able to run high demanding VRAM games via Oculus Link without a stutter.

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Dave Freeman commented
Wow, I was trying to track down how to make it use less VRAM, because 2GB is obscene. Thanks for laying all this out.