Stutters in general gaming | Arch Linux Community | Page 1

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:29 PM

#

General specs:

OS: Archlinux
Kernel: 5.19.1-zen1-1-zen
GPU: GTX 1660 Super
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600x
NVIDIA drivers: nvidia-dkms-open
Main fs: btrfs

Experiencing random stutters (fps drops from 60 to 15-20) in most of my games, including really lightweight ones like stardew valley or terraria. I'm running Plasma (X) with almost no modifications.

What could be causing this issue, or where can I look/what tools can I use to find the root cause of this issue?

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:30 PM

#

do you have proprietary drivers installed ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:30 PM

#

no, I'm running the open source drivers as specified above

#

should I switch back to nvidia-dkms ?

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:31 PM

#

my bad, i skipped over that line

#

and you are running arch linux, yes ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:31 PM

#

correct

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:31 PM

#

sudo pacman -S nvidia lib32-nvidia-libgl nvidia-libgl nvidia-settings

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:32 PM

#

nvidia breaks nvidia-dkms

#

which is I think necessary for the zen kernel

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:32 PM

#

remove nvidia-dkms then

#

oh

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:32 PM

#

the rest of the packages are already installed

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:33 PM

#

try nvidia-dkms then

#

no open

#

very much closed

#

shut, even

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:33 PM

#

one way to put it

#

let's see

#

no, I'm afraid that was not it

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:40 PM

#

what DE / WM are you using ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:40 PM

#

Plasma, X11

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:41 PM

#

can you run a resource monitor on the side and look for spikes ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:41 PM

#

any tool you would prefer?

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:41 PM

#

nope

#

personally i would use htop because it is the one that i've got

#

you use whatever you want, as long as it works

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:43 PM

#

oh, I think I found something

#

apparently I don't get any sutters if the game is being ran in windowed mod

#

holdon I need to test this for other games

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:43 PM

#

that was gonna be my next suggestion actually

#

could be the compositor

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:43 PM

#

oh, nvm

#

it's pretty much still there

#

just a streak of luck i suppose

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:44 PM

#

any spikes in hardware use?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:44 PM

#

not really

#

both ram and cpu usage (on htop) flow mostly the same

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:47 PM

#

and this does not happen on other apps?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:47 PM

#

no, only games as far as I can notice

#

I've also used to experience lag while scrolling up and down in discord but that's been resolved since I started using flatpak

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:49 PM

#

have you rebooted after installing installing the drivers btw ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:49 PM

#

I did

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:49 PM

#

try disabling compositor

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:53 PM

#

no luck with qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:54 PM

#

are you dual booting with windows ?

#

i assume not

#

youd just be playing games on windows if you were

#

but id rather ask than assume

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:58 PM

#

I'm dual booting with win10 but it has proper suspension on shutdown and is on an external disk which I plug off

#

~~It's for a single god damn game~~

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:58 PM

#

what do you mean by proper suspension

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:59 PM

#

by default windows goes on hibernate (iirc) when you shut down, instead of performing full shutdown

#

I changed that from power settings

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 8:59 PM

#

right

#

just do me a favour rq

#

boot into windows and ensure that fast boot is turned off

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 8:59 PM

#

it is

#

I know I've turned it off

#

I can double check for you if you'd like though

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:00 PM

#

yes

#

windows turns it on automatically at will

#

because it is windows

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:01 PM

#

yeah true

#

#

as expected, it's off

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:13 PM

#

well shit

#

ok im gonna learn, much like you

#

actually, Ryzen 5s dont come with an iGPU do they ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:15 PM

#

I don't think so, no

#

after a quick google search, yeah it doesn't

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:17 PM

#

is secure boot disabled?

#

i hear it can do the amongus sometimes

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:18 PM

#

it's disabled

#

wouldn't want any amongus susseries

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:19 PM

#

are you connected via HDMI ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:21 PM

#

yes

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:21 PM

#

this might sound stupid but can you connect via DP?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:22 PM

#

ack

#

I don't think I have a fitting cable for that

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:22 PM

#

fairs

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:22 PM

#

let me check my hardware box

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:23 PM

#

im not entirely sure that this will fix it but i read that someone fixed it by changing from hdmi to dp so we might as well try

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:25 PM

#

yeah no dp cable

#

I don't think my monitor supports it either

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:26 PM

#

monitor not supporting it is serious

#

lmfao

#

does this happen on your windows machine?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:26 PM

#

no, only linux

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:30 PM

#

🤔

#

sorry, im out of ideas

#

but something tells me this is about the zen kernel

#

try using the linux kernel with the nvidia proprietary drivers temporarily

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:34 PM

#

okay, that'll take a bit

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:37 PM

#

and i do need to sleep

#

so hopefully someone else picks up where we left off

#

why do you use the zen kernel btw ?

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:39 PM

#

I too need to sleep

#

but sleep is overrated

#

tux is eternal

#

zen , well, mildly improves performance on desktops so thought I'd take it

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:40 PM

#

ok

#

tell you what

#

if you install and use linux

#

and install nvidia driver instead of nvidia-dkms

#

and it works

#

then you wont have a reason to switch back

#

because this works better

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:41 PM

#

that is right

#

I don't like stutters

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:41 PM

#

lmk if that fixes it

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:41 PM

#

will do

minor forum Aug 18, 2022, 9:41 PM

#

ping me whenever

#

or dm

#

up to you

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 9:41 PM

#

👍

#

no difference

#

default nvidia for drivers and linux for the kernel

#

@minor forum

fathom sinew Aug 18, 2022, 11:17 PM

#

tried wayland just to be sure

#

it's probably not an xorg or/and compositor thing

#

I feel like something about my hardware is making my fps slip up

#

might explain my elden ring performance on windows

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 8:31 AM

#

could be

#

if you could try your GPU on some other system, that'd be neat

#

or try another GPU on this system, if you've got that kind of money 💀

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 8:48 AM

#

I unfortunately do not

#

but I'll try RIPPING OUT - I mean, carefully removing a gtx 970 or whatever it is from my old desktop

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 9:28 AM

#

does 33-35W power draw sound right?

#

recorded the game in the same time as this panel

#

quick recording for reference

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 10:44 AM

#

fathom sinew quick recording for reference

this looks okay

#

i'm starting to think that the problem actually isn't your GPU

#

could be HDD / SDD or RAM

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 10:47 AM

#

the games are on a 500gb ssd

#

it's btrfs, recently scrubbed

#

I also eliminated the monitor

#

tried a different monitor through a different port

#

although the monitor was shitty, that wasn't it

#

here's a benchmark that I got

#

it looks quite good imo

#

but couldn't find any data to compare to

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 10:55 AM

#

fathom sinew it's btrfs, recently scrubbed

https://tenor.com/view/cr1tikal-penguinz0-meme-woo-yeah-baby-gif-19316511

Tenor

#

something tells me this isn't supposed to fluctuate like this

#

i am not sure though, i don't know what you actually used

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:00 AM

#

it's called basemark

#

got from the "benchmarking" page from AUR

#

if there's any benchmarking tools you recommend, I can try those too

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 11:01 AM

#

sadly enough, i don't benchmark

#

i just use my pc and hope it's running well :p

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:01 AM

#

simply a difference in skill I guess

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 11:02 AM

#

absolutely

#

i am way less skilled than the average epic gamer

#

I have an RTX2060 that I use for tetris tournaments 💀

#

(and tetris tournaments alone)

#

anyway

#

how many HDDs / SSDs are you currently running on your system ?

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:03 AM

#

gaming beyond levels I cannot comprehend

#

one ssd and 2 hdds

#

the ssd contains my linux installation

#

one of the hdds is for windows, it's external and mostly unplugged

#

the other hdd iss just storage

#

500gb, 1tb and 2tb in that order

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 11:03 AM

#

fucking radical, i'm running the same setup except without windows

#

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/S.M.A.R.T.#Run_a_test

S.M.A.R.T.

#

run this on your linux drives

#

ignore the windows one

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:04 AM

#

I've ran smart tests recently, but I'll try again

#

okay

#

both devices passed

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 11:13 AM

#

can you record playing the game with a hardware statistic analyser beside it?

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:19 AM

#

wdym by a hardware static analyser

minor forum Aug 19, 2022, 11:35 AM

#

like htop and stuff

#

just to see how many resources are being used exactly

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 11:37 AM

#

oh yeah, sure

#

alright I've got a short recording with few visible stutters (they're less common on windowed mode for stardew, for some reason) but the side-by-side recording obliterated the video quality

#

hope this helps

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 12:45 PM

#

sample furmark on windows for comparison reasons

#

it's, well, as expected

#

6000~ is what my card is expected to score

#

additionally, no visible stutters whatsoever

crystal bloom Aug 19, 2022, 3:04 PM

#

are you using the default kernel (the linux-package)?

fathom sinew Aug 19, 2022, 10:59 PM

#

no, I'm using the zen kernel

#

but you'll see above that I've tested with default nvidia and linux, which made practically no difference

fathom sinew Aug 20, 2022, 8:55 AM

#

looks like its not an xorg thing either, after using nvidia-xconfig and tweaking a little stutters are still there

#Stutters in general gaming