Reserved memory usage greatly increased after kernel update

[darkncold]

Greetings, Gentoo Community!

After upgrading from (I believe) Linux Kernel 6.6.30 to Linux kernel 6.6.32, my system's memory usage went from ~380mb with DWM on X (and nothing else open) to ~800mb with again, DWM on X with nothing open. This was on gentoo-kernel-bin.

I have since upgraded to Linux Kernel 6.9.6 (gentoo-kernel-bin with ~amd64) to see if this issue is resolved. However it seemed to be the same. I'm currently on gentoo-sources, 6.9.6, (not built using genkernel), I have stripped out drivers I do not use in a attempt to improve this issue, however it doesn't seem to help much.

Upon doing a dmesg | grep Memory, I have received this wonderful message:
Memory: 32582576K/33380764K available (18432K kernel code, 2559K rwdata, 5800K rodata, 1972K init, 2712K bss, 797928K reserved, 0K cma-reserved)

Telling me that my system is using...797MB for "reserved". I'll be completely honest, I'm not entirely sure what this means. I have introduced no new hardware into the system nor have I changed any BIOS settings since this kernel upgrade.

Is it possible to somehow drop this value without reverting to kernel 6.6.30? As I understand, this "reserved" memory is not going to cache/programs, and it clearly was lower before this update.

Much thanks!