Unplayable Performance in Linux

[drone-ah]

Hey,

I love this game and want to be able to play more of it - however, the performance in linux is making it unplayable.

It's bearable through the campaign, but once you get to the monolith, the fps drops down something fierce to a handful of frames per second. My rig isn't the newest, but should be powerful enough to handle this (PoE 2 plays fine):

CPU: Intel i7-7820X 3.6Ghz (6 cores) and cpu usage doesn't go all that high
Mem: 256G
Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti

- gamemode is enabled (`gamemoderun %command%`)
- I have tried GE-Proton-9-5, which improves things slightly (9-10 takes a while and doesn't seem to load)
- Bringing the graphics settings all the way to Very Low doesn't seem to make any difference

Any suggestions on how I can get this playable? I don't care about graphics all *that* much, but it's hard to play an action oriented game when it's so hard to know what's going on.

Thanks,

[Schweddy]

LD_PRELOAD="" gamemoderun %command%

[Pwnzerfaust]

Go for either latest Proton or Proton GE and add the parameter PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI=1 in the launch options. I have the same GPU and I am running everything max with smooth performance on 4k in Fedora.

[info]

Originally posted by drone-ah:

Hey,

I love this game and want to be able to play more of it - however, the performance in linux is making it unplayable.

It's bearable through the campaign, but once you get to the monolith, the fps drops down something fierce to a handful of frames per second. My rig isn't the newest, but should be powerful enough to handle this (PoE 2 plays fine):

CPU: Intel i7-7820X 3.6Ghz (6 cores) and cpu usage doesn't go all that high
Mem: 256G
Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti

- gamemode is enabled (`gamemoderun %command%`)
- I have tried GE-Proton-9-5, which improves things slightly (9-10 takes a while and doesn't seem to load)
- Bringing the graphics settings all the way to Very Low doesn't seem to make any difference

Any suggestions on how I can get this playable? I don't care about graphics all *that* much, but it's hard to play an action oriented game when it's so hard to know what's going on.

Thanks,

use an arch based linux. I use EndeavourOS and have used that for 2 years now. I can play *everything* and usually better with less crashes and issues than windows.

then use Proton experimental. that always has the newest nvidia (presumably AMD too) tech activated and so on

other Linux distros (not Arch) use older kernels and thus older driver versions. and they're not made with gaming in mind. Valve directly contributes to Arch as it's used in the Steam Deck.

I regularly can play stuff where everyone cries about weird issues and crashes with nothing on my side. when I used windows with the same hardware, I had neverending issues

I also have slightly (or sometimes way) better performance than on my windows

[drone-ah]

Thank you all for your suggestions.

I've now tried LD_PRELOAD, PROTON_ENABLE_NVAPI, latest and experimental versions of proton, as well as GE-9-10 (it needed more patience). Sadly, with no improvement :(

i am already running Arch (Garuda) but was on the xanmod kernel, switched back to the default vanilla and still no difference.

One thing that is really confusing is in the end of time, the FPS doesn't go much above 30 (the limit is set to 60) and doesn't seem to impacted by the quality settings - i.e. It's around the same range if the quality settings are at ultra or at very low.

Shutting down all apps did not make a difference either, and neither did switching to X11 (I'm usually on wayland).

I switched on streamer mode, switched every single setting to the lowest, and even turned the resolution right down - and all it achieved was an increase of 1 or 2 fps and a nostalgia for the 90s.

One odd thing I noticed is that under btop, it says that Last Epoch has ~120 threads though the total cpu usage was only around 15%.

Any other things I could try?

[Pwnzerfaust]

Hm i am using Proton GE 9-27, did you install the latest version? You can try ProtonUp-QT and install it that way - https://davidotek.github.io/protonup-qt/

Also what comes to mind: Are you using the Flatpak version of Steam? Its sandboxing might cause issues accessing the GPU, so side-note: Can you run other Steam games with full 3D acceleration?

[drone-ah]

Hey, thanks for that - I thought steam would update those automatically - at least I learned something :)

I updated to 9-27, but sadly - exactly the same.

Not a fan of flatpak, so not using that (installed directly from pacman). I also reinstalled steam but no luck there either. Verified integrity of the game too.

I can run Path of Exile 2 at pretty much max settings and I get 60 fps for the most part.

I tried disabling the in-game overlay, and nvidia-gsp as well, with no luck.

Another odd thing I noticed is that the in-game overlay doesn't seem to work with Last Epoch - not sure if it's just me. I enabled the fps overlay in there to find out what the fps is in the loading screens etc, but it doesn't show up and the shortcut doesn't do anything either.

[wedge]

What distro and Kernel version?

[drone-ah]

Originally posted by wedge:

What distro and Kernel version?

Arch(Garuda)

$ uname -a
Linux kitt 6.12.23-x64v-xanmod1-1-lts #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 15 Apr 2025 19:03:53 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Also tried zen (6.14.2.zen1-1)

[Pwnzerfaust]

Tricky case :)

Maybe you can find some hints here? https://www.protondb.com/app/899770
Some mentioned shadows are dragging down performance hard, but you already had those lowered w/o significant improvement...same for VSync?

Going out on a limb you might have luck trying to force Vulkan rendering with the launch options or maybe force D3D11 as last resort?

PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% -force-d3d11

[drone-ah]

Tricky case indeed!

the WINED3D didn't make any difference and the force d11 flag had the game failing to load.

I filed a bug report, and might have to just find something else to play...

Thanks for the assist :)

[wedge]

Try a different Kernel, a non-zen one.

iirc I had issues with a zen kernel in some game once and swapped back to a regular kernel, never used a zen kernel again and tbh it makes not much difference and apparently they are less stable.

If that doesn't work, have you tried a different distro? I'm using EndeavourOS, it's pretty lightweight for gaming.

[aslird]

I am having the exact same issue, but on steamdeck. Using the overlays, i can see cpu usage just drops to zero, and then the whole game runs at 1 fps. Campaign was fine,the issue only started once i reached the monoliths.

[HeritoBiBuba]

Season 1 was very good to me, season 2 is stutter fest on Linux. I don't know if relevant but my VRAM is staying on 8 GB (on max) all the time...

PoE2 running soo much better. No stutters, relatively high fps on high settings.

[InsertCoin]

Originally posted by drone-ah:

Hey,

I love this game and want to be able to play more of it - however, the performance in linux is making it unplayable.

It's bearable through the campaign, but once you get to the monolith, the fps drops down something fierce to a handful of frames per second. My rig isn't the newest, but should be powerful enough to handle this (PoE 2 plays fine):

CPU: Intel i7-7820X 3.6Ghz (6 cores) and cpu usage doesn't go all that high
Mem: 256G
Graphics: Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti

- gamemode is enabled (`gamemoderun %command%`)
- I have tried GE-Proton-9-5, which improves things slightly (9-10 takes a while and doesn't seem to load)
- Bringing the graphics settings all the way to Very Low doesn't seem to make any difference

Any suggestions on how I can get this playable? I don't care about graphics all *that* much, but it's hard to play an action oriented game when it's so hard to know what's going on.

Thanks,

because its not a linux native game, never has been, get windows :)

[wedge]

Originally posted by InsertCoin:

because its not a linux native game, never has been, get windows :)

That's true, although results may vary in Linux depending on the distro/kernel/gpu drivers, so on.

Linux is a great system, devs should add more native support.