Steam Game Recording ignores VAAPI on AMD (RX 7900 XTX) and falls back to x264, causing ~80%+ CPU usage
Hi everyone,
I'm having an issue with Steam Game Recording on Linux that started around 3–4 months ago. Before that, recording worked perfectly and CPU usage was very low.
**SYSTEM**
OS: CachyOS (Arch-based)
Desktop: Wayland
Kernel: 7.1.2-3-cachyos
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX (Navi31)
Driver: Mesa 26.1.4 (radeonsi)
Steam: Stable
Recording codec: HEVC (H.265)
**THE PROBLEM**
As soon as Steam Game Recording starts, CPU usage jumps to 70-100%+.
amdgpu\_top shows:
\- Media Engine: 0%
\- GPU usage normal
\- CPU does all the encoding
•VAAPI appears to work
vainfo reports that hardware encoding is available:
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileHEVCMain10 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
VAProfileAV1Profile0 : VAEntrypointEncSlice
•Steam log
Steam tries to initialize VAAPI but fails and falls back to software encoding:
Trying to create an encoder for recording: \[hardware\_enabled=true\]
Created encoder VAAPI for codec 5
libav: Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
CGameStreamVideoStageVAAPI: Failed to create device context: Input/output error
Failed encoders: 5/5
Created encoder VAAPI for codec 4
libav: Failed to initialise VAAPI connection: -1 (unknown libva error).
CGameStreamVideoStageVAAPI: Failed to create device context: Input/output error
Failed encoders: 5/5, 5/4
Created encoder X264 for codec 4
So Steam clearly detects VAAPI, but cannot create the device context and falls back to x264.
Has anyone with an AMD GPU experienced this recently?
Any ideas for a workaround or whether this is a known Steam regression?
Thanks!