RTX 4080 Monitors Mostly Tax VRAM

The practical risk is capacity, not raw compute.

• –Windows desktop composition and multiple monitors can reserve framebuffer and compositor memory, which matters most when your model plus KV cache already nearly fills VRAM.
• –On Linux/Wayland/X11, overhead is often lower, but refresh-rate and driver quirks can keep memory clocks or power draw elevated even at idle.
• –If inference fits comfortably, the monitor itself is unlikely to dent tokens/sec in any meaningful way; if it does, it is usually because the GPU is memory-bound or the driver is misbehaving.
• –Best mitigation is simple: keep 1-2 GB headroom, prefer the least demanding display path, and benchmark your exact setup instead of trusting anecdotes.