Steam games crashing during gameplay

ferbarra · 2022-07-18 03:41:50

Hi everyone,

First time posting here. I've been running into some issues when playing games on steam. This began around the time I upgraded my RX 5700XT to a RX 6800XT.
I can launch games and play them without problems for 20-min to an hour until all of the sudden the games will freeze. Sometimes a restart is required.
Other times after being frozen for a few seconds the game exits. When this happens, some of my open KDE windows turn black until I select them.
These crashes happen in games that used to work fine (Dota 2, Sea of Thieves and the Witcher 3). After I updated my system this week, the games began crashing
more frequently. For example, Dota 2 used to crash once or twice during a match but this week it was crashing an average of seven times per match.

Here are the things I've tried:
I tried turning off Dynamic Power Management via kernel parameters. Crashes still occurred so I switched it back
I've tried changing /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state to "balanced" or "battery" but it is stuck in "performance".
I've monitored my GPU temperatures during gameplay and they never exceeded 65 degrees Celcius.
I also read that some people were reporting issues with steam when running docker so I stopped and disabled docker.service. So far, the games still crash at the same rate.
I checked the steam .dmp files but I haven't found any details in them.

I'm starting to think that it is not a GPU issue. Also, I bought this used GPU from somebody I trust and I was told that it was working very well on windows.
What other approaches can I take to troubleshoot this issue? Have you encountered something similar with this combination of hardware and software?

Thanks for reading!

Software
=======
Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma 5
GPU driver: AMDGPU driver
Kernel: 5.18.12-arch1-1
Xorg

Hardware
========
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12-Core Processor
GPU: AMD RX 6800 XT
Motherboard: Gigabyte B550 Aorus Elite
Power Supply: 750W

V1del · 2022-07-18 07:58:36

After rebooting from such a crash, post the output of

sudo journalctl -b-1

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

Last edited by V1del (2022-07-18 07:58:46)

ferbarra · 2022-07-19 05:32:57

Should I also do that if a game freezes and exits but doesn't require a reboot? The freezing and exit happens more often than the crashes.

V1del · 2022-07-19 06:55:53

Then -b without -1 should suffice.

ferbarra · 2022-07-21 06:02:07

The output of "sudo journalctl -b-1" is in this Gist https://gist.github.com/ferbarra/50e4e2 … 607b4a2e94

V1del · 2022-07-21 10:57:54

Nothing really suggesting an obvious crash, a few issues for dota loading the cairo lib but that might be normal. What did actually happen when you posted that? What game did you play, when did it hang, how did it hang? FWIW if you get just a game crash, looking at/posting/running steam directly from a terminal might give more targeted log information.

FWIW the only thing I could generally point at though that shouldn't inherently lead to a games crash is that you have your SteamLibrary on a normally visible folder rather than "hidden" under .steam. And by that extension you probably want to exclude ~/Games/SteamLibrary from the baloo file indexer so that doesn't start to index cache data. you can do that in the Desktop Search system settings or via:

 balooctl clear ~/Games/SteamLibrary

ferbarra · 2022-07-23 20:32:04

I posted that right after Dota 2 froze during a match and the game closed. Usually that game stays frozen indefinitely until I switch windows with alt+tab. Once I do that the game closes and the system doesn't crash. I will run steam from the terminal and and remove ~/Games/SteamLibrary from the baloo file indexer.

I began tweaking with the motherboard settings. After turning on smart access memory (SAM) and XMP, game crashes became less frequest. They still happen once in a gaming session instead of
four to seven times. I will keep tweaking related settings and see if that fixes the problem.

Maniaxx · 2022-07-23 20:54:41

ferbarra wrote:

Power Supply: 750W

What brand?

Anything overclocked?

Doesn't sound like a software problem to me.

ferbarra · 2022-07-27 04:33:40

Maniaxx wrote:

ferbarra wrote:
Power Supply: 750W
What brand?
Anything overclocked?
Doesn't sound like a software problem to me.

Corsair TX 750M power supply. I haven't done any overclocking but /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state is stuck on 'performance' mode. Running `echo battery > /sys/class/drm/card0/device/power_dpm_state` as per the Arch Linux Wiki does nothing.
Could it be that the my PSU is unable to keep up?

Last edited by ferbarra (2022-07-27 04:34:14)

Maniaxx · 2022-07-27 20:13:19

ferbarra wrote:

Could it be that the my PSU is unable to keep up?

It wouldn't hurt to test another one. You could also test two other 12V cables beforehand.
Or test the card in a different computer (take it to a friend or similar).
A memtest (or cpu stresstest) wouldn't be wrong either.
Test the system with open case for insufficient air management producing hot spots (VRM etc).

Last edited by Maniaxx (2022-07-27 20:23:09)

ferbarra · 2022-07-28 06:42:21

My problem has gotten worst. The crashes have become more frequent during gaming and Steam now crashes without running any games. The latter started happening after setting up lm_sensors. The package was already installed. I ran `sensors-detect` with the safe defaults according to the wiki.
I then ran `sensors` and the system froze. I rebooted, tried again and the same thing happened. Also this time KDE became stuck after login. I ran `sensors-detect` again and set every option to "no". Now running `sensors` doesn't result in a crash. Now the freezes are more frequent. Is it possible that I messed up something when running `sensors-detect`?

snowturtle63 · 2022-07-31 17:10:09

in dota 2 do you notice any difference between vulkan and opengl? (can be found in the video settings)

ferbarra · 2022-08-03 01:32:15

snowturtle63 wrote:

in dota 2 do you notice any difference between vulkan and opengl? (can be found in the video settings)

Everything outside of gameplay runs better in opengl.

ferbarra · 2022-08-03 01:37:19

I have solved the issue. I had bad RAM. The problem with lm_sensors was documented in the Arch Linux Forums. It doesn't work well with Navi 2 cards. I figured out the problem because the crashes became more frequent and they started occurring in the BIOS screen. No crashes since I removed the faulty RAM 2 days ago.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-07-18 03:41:50

Steam games crashing during gameplay

#2 2022-07-18 07:58:36

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#3 2022-07-19 05:32:57

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#4 2022-07-19 06:55:53

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#5 2022-07-21 06:02:07

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#6 2022-07-21 10:57:54

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#7 2022-07-23 20:32:04

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#8 2022-07-23 20:54:41

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#9 2022-07-27 04:33:40

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#10 2022-07-27 20:13:19

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#11 2022-07-28 06:42:21

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#12 2022-07-31 17:10:09

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#13 2022-08-03 01:32:15

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

#14 2022-08-03 01:37:19

Re: Steam games crashing during gameplay

Board footer