Low FPS on games

pabloflv · 2019-12-07 21:25:10

Hello, I recently switched from Ubuntu to Arch in an attempt to finally get my card (an RX 5700 XT) working properly on Linux, however I seem to have hit some sort of wierd performance penalty on games.
The games in question are Mass Effect Andromeda and Minecraft. Before the switch, on Ubuntu, MEA ran at ~70 to ~43 fps on the Tempest depending in which place you were standing and Minecraft ran at 45 fps average and ~28 minimum. In Arch Linux they're both running significantly lower: 62 to 30 for Mass Effect and 15 to 5 for Minecraft. And no, neither of them have VSync enabled, I checked.
Since the worst one seems to be Minecraft, which is heavily CPU dependent (specially with the 80+ mods I'm running on it), and MEA is running through WINE and DXVK I'm inclined to say that this could be a CPU overhead somewhere, but I can't say for sure.
Any ideas as to why this could be?

I also tested various alternatives to try and help with performance:
Feral's GameMode
Mesa with compile optimizations
Mesa-aco with compile optimizations
Overclocking the GPU
Overclocking the CPU and Memory
Manually setting the processor governor
Installing Xanmod's kernel
Disabling the compositor

From those, running the CPU from 3.0 GHz to 3.7 GHz and the Memory from 2133 to 3200 are the only ones that showed a significant difference, about 10 FPS on MEA. GameMode also gave me about 4 FPS extra and mesa-aco maybe 2.

Tested Kernel/Mesa/DXVK versions are:
Linux 5.3.13
Linux 5.4.2
Linux-xanmod 5.4.2 (with and without compile optimizations, ie. -march=native -mtune=native -O2)
Mesa 19.2
Mesa-git (with and without compile optimizations, ie. -march=native -mtune=native -O2)
Mesa-aco-git (with and without compile optimizations, ie. -march=native -mtune=native -O2)
DXVK 1.4.4 (from Winetricks)
DXVK (master branch from git, compiled with -march=native -mtune=native -O3)

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700
Memory: 32GB 3200MHz
GPU: Reference model AMD RX 5700 XT
Desktop Environment: KDE with SDDM, running under X11 according to loginctl, same DE that I ran on Ubuntu
Wine Version: 4.6 tkg-protonified from Lutris
Java Version: OpenJDK 8

Edit:
I also tried with kernel option mitigations=off, couldn't see much difference, maybe 1 FPS

Edit 2:
Just tried a new install on another disk, only basic packages (kernel, microcode, mesa, wine and opendjk) with LXDE, entirely from what's available on Arch's official repo (meaning no AUR or manual compilation): same results as above, well actually crappier since I didn't go for any optimizations

Last edited by pabloflv (2019-12-08 02:10:43)

greenfoo · 2019-12-08 10:55:36

I reported something similar two days ago here --> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=251188

Considering you have already tried with kernel 5.3.13, it might not be the same issue but if you have time it might be worth trying to revert packages versions to December 2nd and see if that fixes the issue.

In order to do that simply follow these instructions --> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … cific_date

pabloflv · 2019-12-08 14:58:20

greenfoo wrote:

I reported something similar two days ago here --> https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=251188
Considering you have already tried with kernel 5.3.13, it might not be the same issue but if you have time it might be worth trying to revert packages versions to December 2nd and see if that fixes the issue.
In order to do that simply follow these instructions --> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ar … cific_date

Yes I saw your post, it was actually why I tested that kernel. I tried reverting all packages to December 2nd but it made no difference, I got 15 avg. - 10 min. fps on Minecraft and it took a really long time to actually load the map, on Mass Effect Andromeda it was 100 to 103 fps on the main menu and 44 to 70 fps inside the Tempest (the Tempest has some of the most graphically demanding environments on the game).

Out of curiosity I decided to try Manjaro (yes, I know that's kind of a swearword here), and the results were significantly better: On Minecraft it was 38 - 28 fps and the loading times improved a lot, on MEA I got 102 - 101 fps on the menu and 80 - 50 fps on the tempest. These tests were done with a 5.3.11 Manjaro kernel and an optimized mesa-aco-git, same as the tests on the first post.
This suggests that they're either using some sort of patch on the kernel that improves performance or, more likely, that I screwed up when configuring Arch, the problem however would be finding out what exactly I did wrong.

One more thing, in Ubuntu I could get 60 fps or above on almost all areas of the Tempest WITH a resolution scale of 1.15 (a setting inside the game, not through xrandr) on a 1600x900 monitor. These tests were done with a scale of 1.0, if set the scale to 1.15 the FPS drops to the mid 30s on the low end and about 50 on the high end, so something's definitely eating frames here.

pabloflv · 2020-01-12 00:45:05

In case anyone ever comes across this: no, the issue was never solved, I went back to Kubuntu and the performance penalty promptly disappeared. With some additional tinkering I was also able to get an Arch-compiled mesa-git build working on Kubuntu which also solved the issue that caused me to try my luck on Arch.
A pity since Arch Linux has a lot, and I mean a real lot, of potential, but since one of the main things I do on my machine is gaming and neither the wiki nor the community was able (and probably on the latter case except for one guy, willing) to help with this problem, I'll have to stay out of this distro for now.
If any moderator comes across this thread it can safely be closed, I do not plan on attempting to use Arch Linux install as a daily driver anytime soon.

ewaller · 2020-01-12 15:20:26

Closed, by request

Arch Linux

#1 2019-12-07 21:25:10

Low FPS on games

#2 2019-12-08 10:55:36

Re: Low FPS on games

#3 2019-12-08 14:58:20

Re: Low FPS on games

#4 2020-01-12 00:45:05

Re: Low FPS on games

#5 2020-01-12 15:20:26

Re: Low FPS on games

Board footer