I3WM - steam and steam games run slowly

General system Newbie
1

Hello!

I’m currently running EndeavourOS with I3 window manager installed. Upon trying to run Steam and Steam games, (I have tested Half-Life and Mindnight) I have noticed cripplingly slow performance; FPS-wise. By no means is my computer powerful, but having compared the FPS which I am yielding to that of which in GNOME and XFCE, this poor performance is a result of using I3 window manager.

There are a few things to note relating to this issue:

  1. Minecraft runs smoothly across every install whether I am using I3 or not. This leads me to believe that this is specifically a Steam issue. Perhaps Steam doesn’t detect my video drivers?

  2. I am using an NVIDIA graphics card + NVIDIA drivers which are detected by Minecraft, but are probably not recognised by Steam due to its poor performance

  3. I have set up v-sync and 144hz refresh rate in Nvidia X Server Settings, so I am pretty sure that the drivers are properly installed.

  4. At one point, Steam games were running smoothly, (for no real reason mind you) but upon rebooting the PC, the issue came up again; I only had smooth performance for one session.

I will be able to provide any related information upon request to help resolve this issue. Thank you very much!

2

Can you post the output of inxi -Gx ?

3

Output of inxi -Gx

Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] vendor: eVga.com. driver: nvidia v: 470.57.02 
           bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           Device-2: Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio bus-ID: 1-3:2 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.12 driver: loaded: modesetting failed: nvidia resolution: 1920x1080 
           Message: Unable to show advanced data. Required tool glxinfo missing.
4

Have you connected some new BT stuff or controllers when the issue started?

5

I have not. I also noticed that in the output of inxi -Gx it says failed: nvidia. Does that have anything to do with it or is that an expected result?

6

Tbh that’s an unexpected result, if you install glxinfo and post the output again it should provide more info

7

Output of inxi -Gx with glxinfo installed

Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti] vendor: eVga.com. driver: nvidia v: 470.57.02 
           bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           Device-2: Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio bus-ID: 1-3:2 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.12 driver: loaded: modesetting failed: nvidia resolution: 1920x1080 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 12.0.1 256 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 21.1.5 direct render: Yes
8

It seems like it’s using a fallback driver.
It should be a xorg config problem
Try to add the module paths

Section "Device"
  ModulePath "/usr/lib/nvidia/xorg"
  ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

in etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf
or regenerate with nvidia-xconfig

9

In an attempt to add the module paths to the config, I was forced into the TTY where I had to undo the process: ModulePath is not recognised.

Fortunately however, running nvidia-xconfig solved the issue! Thank you very much for assisting me through this process.

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10

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