Most Games Via Steam Play Hitching Badly

[Daemoc]

Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3
Kernel 5.13.0-44
Ryzen 5 5600
16 Gb RAM
RX 6600 XT

About 90% of the games I have tried work. The issue I am having is my frame rate jumps around a lot. Even older games which do not put enough load on the GPU to spin up the fans.

It seems to get worse the faster I move my mouse around on the screen. Or sometimes when I "click". Others still seem to hitch when it loads an asset.

I don't think it is performance related as most run at 60+ fps until it hitches.

Any ideas?

[✠ NightKnight ✠]

Originally posted by Daemoc:

Linux Mint Cinnamon 20.3
Kernel 5.13.0-44
Ryzen 5 5600
16 Gb RAM
RX 6600 XT

About 90% of the games I have tried work. The issue I am having is my frame rate jumps around a lot. Even older games which do not put enough load on the GPU to spin up the fans.

It seems to get worse the faster I move my mouse around on the screen. Or sometimes when I "click". Others still seem to hitch when it loads an asset.

I don't think it is performance related as most run at 60+ fps until it hitches.

Any ideas?

ARE YOU RUNNING XORG ? OR WAYLAND , DO YOU HAVE YOUR MOUSE DRIVER INSTALLED FOR EXAMPLE OPENRAZER OR SOMTHING ?

[Daemoc]

Xorg

I am using the default mouse driver that ships with mint. Using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse.

I should also note, I have tried proton versions 5-7 and even experimental. There seems to be little to no difference.

[✠ NightKnight ✠]

Originally posted by Daemoc:

Xorg

I am using the default mouse driver that ships with mint. Using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse.

I should also note, I have tried proton versions 5-7 and even experimental. There seems to be little to no difference.

i have no problems with mouse however i remember you have to enable "FLAT" mode for the mouse in the settings , i have Logitech and Razer both work perfekt Xorg and Wayland. Maybe its a hardware issue.

[✠ NightKnight ✠]

Originally posted by ІYІ_λ_NightKnight_λ_ІYІ:

Originally posted by Daemoc:

Xorg

I am using the default mouse driver that ships with mint. Using a Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse.

I should also note, I have tried proton versions 5-7 and even experimental. There seems to be little to no difference.

i have no problems with mouse however i remember you have to enable "FLAT" mode for the mouse in the settings , i have Logitech and Razer both work perfekt Xorg and Wayland. Maybe its a hardware issue.

Hey , mate btw , Pls Try Arco Linux = Its a newer kernel bleding edge drivers firmware etc and its easy and user friendly arch distro , Try it out , you have new hardware Try Arco Linux not manjaro ! Go for it and msg me i will help you.

[Der tüddelige Fußgänger]

wait a sec
mint is still based on ubuntu 20.04
which came out early 2020. While your gpu came out late 2020
So linux mint doesn't even properly support your gpu, at least not until linux mint moves to ubuntu 22.04, which came out just last month and is much more up to date and properly supports your gpu
If you don't want to wait of course, install Ubuntu 22.04, fedora 36 or anything Arch based.

Situations like this is why many of us don't recommend LTS distros for gaming.
Such cases don't happen with Archlinux for example, since you get new drivers more quicker after they've been released. Arch only hangs behind a few days/weeks behind in things like kernels, drivers etc.

[Daemoc]

Thanks for the suggestions. I will try disconnecting the mouse & keyboard and try a controller when I get a chance. That should be easy enough.

As for distro switching, I may just have to. I have used Ubuntu, Pop and Mint and like Mint the best of those. I have not tried an Arch distro yet. I really hate to switch again, but I guess it's worth a shot if I can't figure this issue out.

Side note: While distro hoping before, I did about the same testing for all. Outside of test driving the desktop, I just kind of fired up a few games for a second to see if they worked. I really did not sit down and try to play anything for very long. I can't really say if Ubuntu or Pop has the same issue.

[KrazyOne]

I assume you mean stuttering when you go to move the mouse? Not familiar without the term hitching. Could be mouse settings, by default they are design for normal desktop mouse, if you have a high dpi mouse you might have to tinker with settings. Assuming of course you haven't done so. Logitech work out of the box, but some of the dpi settings are dependent on drivers.

[Daemoc]

It's not really a stutter or chop as it runs smooth for the most part, then just stops for a second, then runs smooth again.

Some games do stutter as well though. I have been using "DXVK_HUD": "fps" and my frame rate will be steady, but the mouse and image feels jerky. That is minor though, I can deal with that.

The hitching can be game breaking as the game will just stop for a second and when it starts again I can find myself looking in a completely different direction. It's easy to get lost on games that require fast target acquisition.

FYI, no dice on the controller only. It still does it. When I feel ambitious, I will try a different distro. I will try an Arch based distro next time and see where that gets me.

[KrazyOne]

Hmm is the game freezing causing no input? At least that what I am understanding with your recent post. If so then it not a mouse but Hardware bottle neck somewhere.

[Daemoc]

I think it is keeping track of the inputs while frozen. In a FPS game for example, when it unfreezes sometimes the character will turn really fast as though it was keeping track of the mouse movement while frozen.

I have been turning off all of the desktop enhancement/beauty options in Mint to see if that helps. It does not seem to be as bad, but it could be just placebo.

The only other thing I can think of is some sort of power save feature buried on the OS/hardware somewhere. I cannot run Linux on my laptop because it refuses to pull the GPU out of power save mode. Maybe there is something like that on this desktop as well.

[KrazyOne]

Hmm so input is recognize at least at some point during the freeze, then it responds after unfreeze makes me think there is a driver issue at foot. Yet I'm unsure if it a Driver for GPU or another hardware.

Oh by any chance did you update anything prior to the problem or was it there whole time?

[Daemoc]

It's been there the whole time. I have not installed anything outside of steam and play on linux. The only system change I made was the kernel from 5.4 to 5.13.

I just installed 5.15.0-33 yesterday, (latest available for my os), and I did not notice a difference.

I am going to do some more testing this weekend with a few more games. Maybe try some more native linux games and see if I am having the same issue with those too.

[KrazyOne]

Yeah seems weird, if it was just the mouse tinkering with settings could fix it, but you are actually having issues with freezing with delay input makes me believe something is not functioning correctly.

[Daemoc]

Ok, I have had some more time to test other games which gave me more data to work with. I have fixed a lot of what I have been experiencing. Not all, but a a lot.

One big one was the Mint's desktop vsync. It was set to "presentation time" by default and turning this "off" fixed a lot of my jerky mouse "feel" in games. Even with vsync off in games, it still felt like it was on. This seemed to do the trick.

The second big one, SMR HDD's. CMR drives are almost impossible to find anymore. In fact, the last two drives I bought specifically looking for CMR's had SMR drives in the CMR packaging.

^^Side note, I will never trust WD again. These were unopened new in box retail drives bought from a brick and mortar. That should be against the law as far as I am concerned.

Anyway, I took those back and used an old CMR drive I had on my windows machine and it really did make a difference. I was surprised this would even matter on these old games I tried. It must have something to do with Proton and processing shaders during play. (I do have the shaders set to precache, but it still must be doing something realtime)

Which brings me to issue number 3, a lot of the older games like the "use Wine3d" and "no D3D11" options. I have configured Proton 6 with these options and force that version for the older games.

Lastly, I have turned off all of Mints desktop effects. I am not sure how much this has helped, if at all, but I did not really notice a difference in the desktop experience either so I think I will leave it as is.

This has been kind of a head ache, but it is worth it to get rid of Windows. I felt bad enough using 10, but there is no way I was migrating to 11. At least I can still game.

Thanks again for all of the suggestions. Hopefully I won't have too many more issues.