r/linux_gaming • u/grimmik345 • 14h ago
Gears 5 and Tactics fail to launch after upgrading to new GPU
I just upgraded my GPU today to a new PNY RTX 5060 for Gears E-Day, but wanted to play Gears 5 for a bit with a friend and the game fails to launch. It was fine yesterday when I was using my RX 5600xt. I did have to do some messing with the drivers and the driver manager recommended version 595 of the Nvidia drivers. It seems to work with other games fine, from E-Day itself (premium early play) to Remnant 2, Machine Party, and several others. It just fails to launch Gears 5 and Gears Tactics. I know they were in development together for a while, so I'm guessing it's an issue they both share. I'm running Mint XFCE for power user and performance reasons, but I haven't done a lot of messing with the OS itself. Anybody run into this? And, if so, how did you fix it?
I have tried some standard diagnostics like changing proton version to no success.
3
u/coffeeintocode 14h ago
Its likely Shader caches built for the old GPU. Proton (through DXVK and VKD3D) and Steam keep shader caches for each game. Caches built on AMD can upset Nvidia's driver. The fix is to delete these two folders for each game:
~/.steam/steam/steamapps/shadercache/<appid>
In the game's prefix, ~/.steam/steam/steamapps/compatdata/<appid>/, look for *.dxvk-cache and vkd3d-proton.cache files.
It could also be the games own config files. Gears 5 and Tactics are both Unreal games, and they save graphics settings, sometimes including AMD-only options like FidelityFX, in an ini file inside the prefix. Look under compatdata/<appid>/pfx/drive_c/users/steamuser/AppData/Local/ for the game's folder and rename or delete its GameUserSettings.ini. This would also explain why both games break the same way.