Games on Proton freezing - Already tried several things without success

General system Gaming, sound and video
1

Hey guys, I would love some help if possible. This situation is making me crazy. :frowning:

Every game I try to run on Steam - Proton (and also non-steam) freezes at some point. After, let’s say, 15 - 30 minutes of gameplay. Many times I can hear the music, the sounds, etc, but the screen is totally frozen, and I need to manually kill the related proccesses.

My main system is on i3wm. I also installed Xfce here, and this is now the DE I am doing all the other tests (same problems also happens here).

Well, I tried to install other kernels (LTS and Zen), but the same problems remains. I am running the games putting some init parameters, related to gamescope: this is the only way games even start here - because without gamescope, all I can see is a black screen.

I am now with Nvidia’s proprietary drivers - I though they would be better. I already tried many, many things, but the same freezings happens, no matter what game I try, forcing me to manually close them.

My graphics card is a GTX 1060, I am on a laptop. I am a little desperate here because nothing I do seems to help.

Below are some data from inxi:

Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 630 vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: i915
    v: kernel arch: Gen-9.5 process: Intel 14nm built: 2016-20 ports:
    active: eDP-1 empty: none bus-ID: 00:02.0 chip-ID: 8086:591b
    class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP106M [GeForce GTX 1060 Mobile]
    vendor: Acer Incorporated ALI driver: nvidia v: 565.77
    alternate: nouveau,nvidia_drm non-free: 550.xx+ status: current (as of
    2024-09; EOL~2026-12-xx) arch: Pascal code: GP10x process: TSMC 16nm
    built: 2016-2021 pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 16 link-max: gen: 3
    speed: 8 GT/s ports: active: none empty: DP-1,HDMI-A-1 bus-ID: 01:00.0
    chip-ID: 10de:1c20 class-ID: 0300
  Device-3: Quanta HD Webcam driver: uvcvideo type: USB rev: 2.0
    speed: 480 Mb/s lanes: 1 mode: 2.0 bus-ID: 1-9:7 chip-ID: 0408:a060
    class-ID: 0e02 serial: 200901010001
  Display: unspecified server: X.org v: 1.21.1.14 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.4
    compositor: Picom v: 12.5 driver: X: loaded: modesetting,nvidia
    alternate: fbdev,intel,nouveau,nv,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915 display-ID: :0
    screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-size: <missing: xdpyinfo>
  Monitor-1: eDP-1 model: AU Optronics 0x61ed built: 2016 res: 1920x1080
    hz: 60 dpi: 142 gamma: 1.2 size: 344x193mm (13.54x7.6") diag: 394mm (15.5")
    ratio: 16:9 modes: 1920x1080
  API: OpenGL Message: Unable to show GL data. glxinfo is missing.

My processor is a Intel Core i7 7700HQ, I have 16 GB of RAM. All games are running on a Nvme SSD.

I would appreciate any help if possible.

P.S.: I have also tried Steam Flatpak, but the same problem happens with it.

2

I’d suggest enabling Proton logging and seeing if there is something that helps in there. Although this regular freezing sounds like a heating problem or a similar hardware issue. Which Proton version are you running?

1 Like
3

Maybe start troubleshooting that part? That’s not normal. Are you certain you’re running your games on the correct gpu? and does it happen in other desktop environments, like say i3? sway?

4

So, I enabled Proton logging. There’s nothing special there, despite that “errors” mentioning files that does not exists. I read somethings about those errors, and if I understood correctly they are normal. Like the ones below:

224.301:011c:0164:warn:debugstr:OutputDebugStringA "[15.12.2024 10-24-21][streamline][error]file.h:94[open] File 'C:\\ProgramData/NVIDIA/NGX/models/nvngx_config.txt' does not exist\n"

224.301:011c:0164:warn:seh:dispatch_exception "[15.12.2024 10-24-21][streamline][error]file.h:94[open] File 'C:\\ProgramData/NVIDIA/NGX/models/nvngx_config.txt' does not exist\n"

etc...

Currently I’m on Proton Experimental, but already tried Hotfix, 9.0.4, GE, etc, without success.

Yes, they’re running on the Nvidia card. It happens now on all environments I use (i3wm and Xfce).

5

Hi there,

Anyone has some idea, at least to start troubleshooting this? Unfortunately the Proton logs don’t show anything. :frowning:

6

It only happens with games on proton? What happens if you play them with wine instead (you can try that for non-steam games at least), still crash?

And like I said, start by troubleshooting the gamescope issue, you really should not need to run the games on gamescope, and it could be the cause of your freezing issue. Gamescope has been known to haev issues with nvidia gpus sometimes.

7

Well, I don’t try non-steam games for a while, I’ll try that.

And you’re right, there’s something strange here, because I am only able to run games using Gamescope.

Thank you so much.

8

So the system is fine, it’s only the game (process ?) that’s freezing?

9

Yes, all the other things are more than fine. Everything works perfectly.

Just the games are freezing. :frowning:

10

Try running with environment variable LD_PRELOAD="" in your launch options, it’s a known bug with steam. See here for more infos.

There is another known issue with nvidia, in case LD_PRELOAD="" doesn’t work for you, also try VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_KHR_present_wait, maybe in combination with LD_PRELOAD="", see here for more infos.

To sum it up, try setting
LD_PRELOAD="" VKD3D_DISABLE_EXTENSIONS=VK_KHR_present_wait %command%
in your steam launch options.

2 Likes
11

@jul.cgn ,

Thank you so much. I’ll try this now!

12

Justed tested, and unfortunately, does not worked.

Same freezing, and I had to maintain gamescope parameters for games to start.

13

Are you monitoring your hardware temperatures ?

The issue which I see is that you’re driving a 1080p display resolution, with an mobile GTX 1060 chip.
Which isn’t really that powerful and I can’t really tell if it’s the 6GB or the 3GB variant of the mobile chip.

The definite model number and Type of you Acer Laptop might be helpful, just to look into your hardware specs and compatibility that laptops compatibility with linux. The Arch wiki is quite detailed about the various laptops from Acer and may provide the required info which we would have to diagnose here. I can’t really tell if you’re using the software packages for iGPU / dGPU switching.

14

Hi, well, I have not monitored those until now.

My laptop is an Acer Predator G3-572 v: V1.22. The mobile GTX 1060 has 6 GB VRAM.

But even so, it is strange that games only starts if I use that gamescope launch parameters. Without them all titles freezes when the developers’s logo appears.

So perhaps lowering the resolution could help, right?

15

Do you even use prime render offloading or envy control to use the dGPU exlusively, preventing that the iGPU is being used for the games ?

16

I don’t know anything about gamescope since I’m not using it. But maybe you need to start digging in the links I gave you. E.g. there’s a related issue here with gamescope where a user reported it to work.

Also try disabling/enabling steam overlay. With a combination of environtment variables and/or running with gamescope.

17

No, I have never used those. Maybe I should try .

@jul.cgn ,

I’ll try.

Regarding Steam overlay, even disabled the games still freezing. Will try all that.

18

Sorry that I can’t help you further. Good luck :slight_smile:

19

No worries. Thank you. :slight_smile:

20

You can see from the scan of the Proton logs already that the games are not the problem, otherwise you could see the problems in there.

Another avenue you could explore is to post in the respective thread for any specific game in the Proton Github repo. Most games have a thread there, so pick a game out and post the problem and a generated log and see if anyone there can help you. Did you already test if the problem is only with Proton games, or if native games or games by any other means (Lutris, Bottles) are afflicted too?