u/Keenwhisk

My PC has a 9060 XT and a 7800X3D.

I used a manual Arch Linux installation for quite a while, but I was always dealing with problems related to XWayland, finding the best Proton version for every game, Gamescope not working correctly, high input lag in games, tearing, bad frame pacing, issues with winewayland.drv, and so on...

I decided to give SteamOS a try, but I wasn't expecting much. I installed the latest Deck image, and as soon as I started installing and testing games, I was fucking MINDBLOWN by how perfectly everything works on SteamOS.

Awesome things I want to mention:

1. Gamescope works perfectly OOTB. No flickering, no artifacting. Also, latency and input lag feel muuuuch lower, and the input response is so snappy. On Windows (and even on stock Arch, with games running in XWayland) with uncapped FPS and no V-Sync, the input feels like shit compared to Gamescope, where the input response is incredibly low. And the most mind-blowing thing is that it has NO FUCKING TEARING!!! I tested various older games where I always had latency issues, like Just Cause 2, Borderlands 2, GTA IV, etc., and they all feel so snappy now.
2. The image is slightly more vibrant and sharper in Gaming Mode, and I actually like it. It just looks better this way.
3. It selects suitable Proton version for each game, for some it chooses Experimental, for most of the games if chooses Proton 10.0-4, and I like that I don't have to mess around with that myself.

Issues I had:

1. Slight gamma flicker in Gaming Mode as soon as the cursor disappears. I managed to fix it by enabling Force Compositing in the Developer Settings menu. I don't use VRR, though, and I don't need it here since the image is perfectly synchronized and latency is already very low anyway. (UPD: Enabling Force Compositing has significant drawback. It breaks frametime and framepacing in some games I tested, like Dirt Rally 2.0 and also adds some noticable amount of latency, so I disabled it...)
2. Scrolling through the library in Gaming Mode is laggy when the cursor is over the game artwork. If you lineup the cursor between the artworks, it's smooth.
3. All games launch very slowly. I don't know why this is happening — they launch slowly even after shader precaching has finished. This doesn't bother me that much, though.
4. It didn't detect my Ethernet connection as soon as I installed SteamOS, so I had to go to the tty session and restart NetworkManager. Thanks to who posted this workaround on this subreddit!
5. Gamescope FPS limiter adds extreme amount of latency so mouse is literally floating. So I prefer using DXVK_CONFIG="dxgi.maxFrameRate = X" %command% (dxgi for dx10/11, d3d9 for dx9 games). This way latency is extremely low.

Overall, the experience has been amazing, and I feel like I want to stay here. I may add more info to this post if I discover more things.

Anyone managed to solve this?

I mean, the game has frequent random spikes on a frametime on a servers where Punkbuster is enabled, and it does not happen on servers that do not have it.

Also, the game suffers from low fps because of RenderPerfOverlayEnable setting which is enabled by default and I found no way to disable it permanently, nor other people have found a way, it just resets every time you get killed. As soon as you disable this setting via ingame console, FPS turns back to solid 200, and when you die it instantly goes to 130-150.

Anyone who plays this game on Linux who have information about this?

Got this after purchasing Counter Strike Complete Pack, and have no one to gift this to.

If you want this and your account meets the country requirements which are:

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan

PM me or leave a comment with ur friend-code.

I mean, sometimes you launch a game with, let's say, Proton Experimental, and it runs flawlessly — but then you encounter a graphical glitch that turns out to be a regression in Experimental that isn't present on Proton 9.0-4.

1. Can I just change the Proton version for this game, or do I need to reinstall it? Is reinstalling good practice to avoid issues, or is it totally unnecessary?
2. Do I have to manually remove the prefix folder beforehand, or Steam automatically updating prefix is fine?

Sometimes you just have to tinker a lot with Proton versions to find the best one for a specific game.

I am seeing so many reports on ProtonDB, where people use this enviromental variable using Proton Experimental or any other official stable Proton, but when I try to use it, MangoHud still reports that the display server is XWayland. What the hell?

Hi there,

The mouse movement in this game just feels weird. It almost feels like it's emulating a gamepad's analog stick instead of using true mouse input. Whenever I move the mouse, the movement seems oddly "guided," almost like it's snapping or sticking to the horizontal or vertical axis.

I don't have this issue in Serious Sam Classics: Revolution, though — the mouse input there feels perfectly normal.

I have Sharp Turning enabled and Mouse Smoothing disabled. I've also tried both enabling and disabling Mouse Acceleration, but it doesn't make any difference.

Has anyone else noticed this?

UPD1:

Nevermind.

It was the fault of the Proton version I'm running this game with (I'm Linux user).

I installed Proton-CachyOS and added PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 %command% to my game launch options and mouse input is perfect now.

Seems like it is a problem with XWayland...

UPD2: Tried gamescope. It also works. Mouse input is also awesome with it.

Hi there. I have a weird issue with VRR when I have YouTube video playing in Firefox at the background while playing.

Some black stripes appear occasionally for half a second in all games, like a brief flashing.

Disabling Hardware Acceleration in Firefox fixes this problem, but I can't use Firefox without it since it breaks a lot of rendering.

They appear randomly, like, you can play 5 minutes without it and then it suddenly flashes.

I also have Adaptive Sync disabled for Firefox in window rules, but it doesn't help. Adaptive Sync is set to Automatic.

I have also tested games with PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 hoping it would help, but it did not.

Hi there. I have a weird issue with VRR when I have YouTube video playing in Firefox at the background while playing.

Some black stripes appear occasionally for half a second in all games, like a brief flashing.

Disabling Hardware Acceleration in Firefox fixes this problem, but I can't use Firefox without it since it breaks a lot of rendering.

They appear randomly, like, you can play 5 minutes without it and then it suddenly flashes.

I also have Adaptive Sync disabled for Firefox in window rules, but it doesn't help. Adaptive Sync is set to Automatic.

I have also tested games with PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 hoping it would help, but it did not.

There have been no updates since March 23, and a lot has happened in the meantime — we’ve had Forza Horizon 6 and many new games released. Meanwhile, Proton-GE is still stuck at version 10-34. Has GloriousEggroll abandoned it, or is he cooking something big, including fixes for the newest games?

Somehow on bfland I'm getting much higher input lag in games, without any sched_ext though input lag is good. My CPU is 7800X3D and I'm using PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1.

https://preview.redd.it/4y1iduqoe88h1.png?width=637&format=png&auto=webp&s=ca611196c0ea7e2a89e0d480ee4cee62318f9370

Recently, I made a post asking for non-VRR workarounds that are able to provide both good latency and no tearing with correct frame pacing.

And I have come to the conclusion that it is actually technically impossible without VRR.

I tested Just Cause 2 to showcase what I mean:

Without VRR, I first enabled an FPS cap of 60 FPS (this game must be capped to that value for correct physics behavior), and the frame pacing felt smooth, correct, and enjoyable. But the tearing was extremely awful. To eliminate it, the only option is to enable some kind of V-Sync.

So I tried every V-Sync method: the in-game implementation, MangoHud (FIFO/Mailbox), DXVK's V-Sync, and the compositor's V-Sync. With every type of V-Sync combined with an FPS cap, there was awful frame skipping and jittery motion when moving the mouse. It was very noticeable: sometimes I would move the mouse and everything felt smooth, and then it would suddenly start jittering and skipping frames, even though the frametime graph was perfectly flat.

At that point, I decided to try VRR once again. As soon as I enabled it, disabled V-Sync, and left my FPS cap at 60, the game felt awesome: no tearing, no frame skipping, no jitter. Just clear and smooth motion.

The exact same behavior was present in Control, and I guess it will be the same in 99% of games as well. After enabling VRR, it fixed everything there too.

So, at this point, I realized how vital VRR actually is for gaming today. Without it, you have to deal with either tearing or bad latency combined with jitter, and both of those things are, in my opinion, unacceptable and unplayable.

Hi there. I'd like to hear from people who have actually seen better FPS, improved 1% lows, or lower latency in games on CachyOS compared to stock Arch or other upstream distributions.

Has anyone done thorough benchmarks that clearly showcase these differences?

I'm curious whether CachyOS, with its kernel, optimizations, and custom Proton, is actually able to squeeze more performance out of the hardware.

Feel free to share your benchmarks, opinions, or personal experiences.

VRR is a great technology, but not every monitor handles it well, and there are still some practically unavoidable issues, such as brightness flickering in game menus and loading screens. As well as issues like that. OLED monitors are particularly notorious for VRR-related flickering due to characteristics inherent to OLED technology. Because of this, it can sometimes be better to disable VRR altogether and use other methods that provide a good balance of low latency and a synchronized, tear-free image.

So, how do you avoid screen tearing without using VRR? What workarounds or methods do you use to get a clean, tear-free image without a huge latency penalty?

• What V-Sync method do you use: in-game V-Sync, MangoHud's V-Sync, or global V-Sync with "Allow tearing" unticked?
• Do you cap your FPS with V-Sync enabled? If so, what FPS caps do you use, and do they depend on the game? Have you experienced any frame pacing issues when using both V-Sync and an FPS cap?
• Do you have "Allow tearing in fullscreen applications" in KDE Display Settings ticked or unticked?
• For those who use Mailbox V-Sync everywhere, have you experienced any frame pacing issues?
• Many games require specific FPS caps, such as 60 or 90 FPS. How do you handle V-Sync in games like that?

Any opinions on this topic are welcome. Feel free to share your setup and your thoughts!