Realistically, going down to 12GB System RAM from 15GB is not very noticeable compared to going from 1GB to 4GB VRAM and so I think it should be preferred.
If you ran into issues with a very RAM heavy game (unlikely), you could change it to 14GB + 2GB, or go all the way back to 15GB + 1GB.
If you are using the Steam Deck on an external display that is higher resolution than its native 1280x800 display, you should probably do 12GB + 4GB to make room for higher resolution textures.
Haven’t tested this, but if there were noticable differences, I would think these are the most likely scenarios for them to crop up.
Well, that means the system RAM left for the CPU is 12 GB instead of 15, since the CPU and the GPU share the same 16 GB pool. So any system RAM heavy games would suffer.
Worth noting that the default isn’t 1GB. The default is “auto” and the Deck will try to dynamically adjust between more VRAM and more system RAM as needed.
This works fine for most games, but for some it helps if all 4GB is immediately visible without having to ramp up.
That you can change the VRAM size from 1 GB up to 4 GB in the BIOS.
Are there any drawbacks?
Realistically, going down to 12GB System RAM from 15GB is not very noticeable compared to going from 1GB to 4GB VRAM and so I think it should be preferred. If you ran into issues with a very RAM heavy game (unlikely), you could change it to 14GB + 2GB, or go all the way back to 15GB + 1GB. If you are using the Steam Deck on an external display that is higher resolution than its native 1280x800 display, you should probably do 12GB + 4GB to make room for higher resolution textures. Haven’t tested this, but if there were noticable differences, I would think these are the most likely scenarios for them to crop up.
Well, that means the system RAM left for the CPU is 12 GB instead of 15, since the CPU and the GPU share the same 16 GB pool. So any system RAM heavy games would suffer.
Worth noting that the default isn’t 1GB. The default is “auto” and the Deck will try to dynamically adjust between more VRAM and more system RAM as needed.
This works fine for most games, but for some it helps if all 4GB is immediately visible without having to ramp up.