Disable Vulkan by default?

[462_Geekman]

For some reason, Proton 5 never worked on my machine.

Since I usually played only Oblivion with my linux box, I simply kept using Proton 4...
But I cannot leave 'well enough' alone and delved a bit into the reason why. Turns out my system has Vulkan libs installed due to some (unused) dependencies, and Proton 5 decided to use them (and fail) by default.
While I did add the relevant launch option in Oblivion, I would like to avoid having to add it for every game I try with it.

So... Is there a way to tell Proton to use OpenGL by default?
(I tried properly configuring Vulkan on the machine ( Debian 10, Radeon 7850), but I keep getting "VK_ERROR_INCOMPATIBLE_DRIVER" (when X loads properly) and uninstalling Vulkan means losing a fair share of Gnome, for some reason )

[N0P3]

No easy way to just simply switch although I believe I've seen evidence about indicating that it is possible with manually edited Proton config files for individual games like Wine uses bottles.

It would be an awesome upgrade to the Proton management system simply adding a control group, like radio buttons, toggling between Vulkan & OpenGL in a game's properties dialog - activated with Steam Play and located somewhere around the Proton version drop-down.

[Cat on Linux]

you will have to add launch parameter to use d3d instead of vulkan to every non-working game in proton 5 or simply keep Proton 4x as your default version and switch games to version 5x only if you need to (performance issues, bugs etc).

I have similar issue on older PC where video card has no vulkan support but my distro pulled vulkan metapackage anyway. using Proton 4.2.9 with it, works.

[Marlock]

This may help you poke around for Proton 5-specific issues:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1742266800327182921/#c1742266965427432608

To answer your "how to avoid Vulkan" question specifically, try using PROTON_USE_WINED3D as launch parameter for that game:

Steam > Library > right click the game > Properties > lauch parameters (or something like that) > paste this in the text box

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command%

After that, you can hit play, and if it still doesn't work, maybe have a look at item [4] here for frequent steps to troubleshoot Proton game issues:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1636417404917541481/

[462_Geekman]

The STEAM_COMPAT_CONFIG variable was the kind of thing I was searching for: a quick edit to user_settings.py and now I'm done ( until the next update).

Thanks!

[462_Geekman]

(And of course, *now* I get Vulkan to run...Turns out the debian wiki gave the wrong parameters as kernel launch options)

[Marlock]

Originally posted by 462_Geekman:

(And of course, *now* I get Vulkan to run...Turns out the debian wiki gave the wrong parameters as kernel launch options)

If you're sure that it's wrong/outdated info there, could you try to get that fixed in the wiki?

Out of curiosity, what was the gotcha?

[462_Geekman]

The wiki says to use "radeon.cik_support=0 amdgpu.cik_support=1". The ones that works for me are "amdgpu.si_support=1 radeon.si_support=0" ( in that specific order too).

[Marlock]

Ah, yes... then your GPU is from the Southern Islands (.si) family and not the Sea Islands (.cik) family... they could just ask people to place both sets of parameters to avoid having to figure out the exact family (which were a little bit messy-named then)

And the order was relevant to the success of those parameters? That's news for me...

[462_Geekman]

It shouldn't but it worked that way... Not that it's very reliable: the window manager refused to load today after a cold boot (mouse cursor and black screen) but a reboot later, it works.

[Marlock]

Yes, AMDGPU is still experimental on SI gpus and not great yet.

My previous GPU was a AMD HD 7770 so this feels all too familiar.


You might achieve better stability if you try enabling/disabling some extra kernel flags related to this experimental support... this used to work best for me:

radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1 amdgpu.dc=1 radeon.dpm=0 amdgpu.dpm=1

".dc" stands for Display Code (or something like it)
".dpm" stands for Dynamic Power Management

It makes sense that enabling the amdgpu variant of all 3 parts would work better than just one.

ref:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/927601/i-think-im-using-radeon-instead-of-amdgpu-how-do-i-change


Also, you should try different kernel versions (the newer the better)...

... but be aware of a bug I bumped into using the upstream kernels in LM 19.x (based off Ubuntu 18.04):
(hopefully not an issue anymore or in other distros)

There used to be a bug with 4.19 where the kernel only looked for gpu firmware files in /lib/firmware/amdgpu but not in /lib/firmware/radeon, yet for some GPUs like my Cape Verde (of the SI family) the files (part of firmware-linux package) were only placed in the other location.

To use it you'd need a recent version of linux-firmware which placed verde_{ce,k_smc,mc,me,pfp,rlc,smc}.bin files (verde_* in my case, not sure the naming for yours) in both locations.

[Aoi Blue]

There are two options:

First option is to force WineD3D. This is the more stable and well-tested option for your card.

The second option is to force the use of the newer AMDGPU driver.

Weighing the two options the second option will give you better performance (in all games), but the first option is more stable.

Both options have been outlined by previous posters.