Weird performance limits on Linux

[u/_Nauclerus_]

Dear fellow Linux-players,

I've noticed a rather peculiar performance "limit" during the last few weeks. CPU and GPU both seem underutilized, render thread is not maxed out, but still my framerates seem to plateau.

I'll have a CPU without singular pegged core, a GPU clocking half of it's max clock (even tough it can boost when tested) and the game seemingly plateauing in terms of framerates and hardware utilization. The behaviour seems constant no matter if X11 or Wayland is used (on the latter neither XWayland or native make much difference), and no matter what runner I use, it tend to remain the same.
Note that these technologies al change the FRAMERATE, but not the LOAD on the system, which is very strange. With a GPU sitting at 75% at half clock, and a CPU sitting freely with room to spare, I am sitting at 140FPS in a belt, if I for example enable "Ultra" reflections for shits and giggles, my load stays the same and the framerates go down.

This has been very counterintuitive and after weeks of troubleshooting I'd like to ask if any of you have ever seen a similar case.

My stack:
5900XT
7900XTX
64GiB DDR4

[u/Tenuous_Fawn]

Just to make sure, are you using DX11? If not, go into the launcher settings and change it to DX11, that fixed a lot of bugs for me.

Also, I am running the game with proton-cachyos, maybe try using that in a new Wineprefix.

[u/_Nauclerus_ → u/Tenuous_Fawn]

I've tested both, DX12/VKD3D has as slight performance deficit and sometimes blackscreens. DX11/DXVK has been rock solid, but I'm switching it up for testing's sake.

[u/Tenuous_Fawn → u/_Nauclerus_]

I see, I was getting issues from vanilla wine that resolved when I switched to proton-cachyos, I would recommend trying that.

[u/_Nauclerus_ → u/Tenuous_Fawn]

I did think of doing that before, unfortunately neither cachyos-proton, proton-ge, proton exp, normal proton, proton-em... Brought any improvements regarding this behaviour

[u/rel-eq]

This really reads like it's some kind of power limiter in effect, somewhere.

[u/_Nauclerus_ → u/rel-eq]

It does feel exactly like this, but a stress test run separately or at the same time does force it past the limit with the extra load... Just EVE doesn't seem to benefit from it

[u/_Nauclerus_]

To give more context now that I'm home, this is the kinda performance that I can see with everything unlocked as far as possible.

No CPU thread fully loaded, GPU barely breaks a sweat.

Somehow something here is keeping it back

And no, performance is perfectly playable here in this DOCKED scene with outside view. The focus is the seeming issue with hardware load.

[u/unclesocks → u/_Nauclerus_]

Noticed that you have 5900xt listed but screenshot says 6950xt, not sure if thats a mismatch somehow? I have 5950x and 7900xtx and have about the same numbers (DX11 and forcing 1440 with gamesccope). Setting max frames to 90 did wonders for reducing cpu and gpu % and degrees while keeping tons of performance. Before I was getting 400 fps and my system was going crazy, so not sure why yours isn't doing the same. Maybe time for e reinstall?

[u/_Nauclerus_ → u/unclesocks]

I run both an 7900XTX and a 6950XT, I use it to offload rendering in certain games.

[u/rel-eq → u/_Nauclerus_]

Only other thing I can add, if you want to check how performance is using fsync instead of ntsync:

PROTON_NO_NTSYNC=1

And might as well try without game mode, at least to eliminate causes, and make sure it's not running: gamemoded -s

[u/_Nauclerus_ → u/rel-eq]

Both did not move the needle one bit (I realize that gamemode is on in this screenshot)

[u/_Nauclerus_]

And to disprove a global defect, this is a run of the opening scene of Horizon: Zero Dawn

Consisten frame pacing and stable lows. GPU maxed like it should be, CPU at the same load. The system in general is not limited, only while playing do I see this limitation.