Very bad stuttering in Vulkan games after an hour with Steam overlay disabled

[mitch74fr]

• Steam client version (build number or date): Several (both stable and beta) for the last year or so
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04, with base, hwe and mainline kernels + base, stable and daily Mesa stacks all tested
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

Playing a Vulkan game on Mesa on a Radeon RX480 (I didn't try other cards nor drivers) will cause VERY bad stuttering after 30-60 minutes of gameplay when Steam overlay is deactivated. This affects both native and Steamplay-enabled games on Steam for Linux (Mad Max beta with Vulkan and Doom), but installing Steam for Windows over Wine on the same system and running the very same game (Doom) with the same settings won't cause the stuttering.

1. get a "vanilla" Ubuntu system up (16.04 or 18.04) on a Radeon Polaris card with a recent version of Mesa installed (i.e. you need RADV). You can mix'n'match kernels and Mesa builds at will.
2. disable Steam Overlay for a Vulkan-using game.
3. Play said game for an hour with keyboard and mouse.

[jarrard]

I may have experienced this before with a game I have been testing with steam overlay disabled, was going fine for a hour but then suddenly started stuttering.. can't be sure if its due to disabled steam overlay but I will now enable it for next time I test it out.

Just played deep rock galactic with overlay enabled for over a hour without any stutter issue, so it seems this might be a thing thought I haven't tested it a second time with it disabled yet.

[ssorgatem]

This happens to me too with Proton games using DXVK

[Ruedii]

Might be a driver issue (memory leaks maybe?)

What driver are you using?

I've never experienced this issue, but I don't play many games for that long.

I don't know how disabling the overlay could cause this. It's more likely that enabling the overlay somehow fixes this. Just a shot in the dark, but the overlay creates a second context, thus causing the driver to behave slightly differently in a manner that works around the issue as a fluke.

I typically don't disable the overlay because I find some of it's functions useful to do certain things (like manage screenshots or use steam chat) without completely alt-tabbing out of the game.

[witcheslive]

Interestingly, this sound like an issue I am experiencing in Final Fantasy XIV (see previous link @schives made) but I have not disabled the overlay. I have played no other games other than FFXIV for more than an hour so I guess I haven't checked if it's unique to FFXIV!

[taleden]

I have this same issue in Valheim on Linux Mint 20.1, with a GTX 1070 using the nvidia binary driver.

If I launch from Steam with the Overlay disabled using the default Vulkan renderer, then in the 30-45 minute range after launch I start getting severe stuttering / FPS drop that seems tied to input handling (keyboard or mouse). When it starts happening, if I stand still (or even on a moving boat) FPS is fine (~25 in a big base, ~65 in the wilderness), but if I start twitching the mouse slightly, or pressing the keys to zoom the minimap, FPS drops severely (~8 in base).

If I launch the game with OpenGL, it's fine. If I enable the Overlay, it's fine. If I launch the (linux-native) game externally by executing the binary directly, Steam still detects that it's running but it also works fine. If I reboot into Windows and use the Vulkan renderer on all the same hardware, it's fine.

But in linux, with Vulkan, without the Overlay, when launching from Steam rather than running the binary directly, this issue happens every time after 30-45 minutes of play time.

It seems especially strange to me that it seems in no way related to any kind of heavy graphical rendering load; even in very low-demand scenes where FPS is typically very high, it stutters badly whenever the game receives any keyboard or mouse input (but maybe not gamepad input -- I can't confirm that, but in a reddit thread about this problem, another player reported experiencing this specifically with keyboard and mouse input but not with gamepad input).

[slizersteam]

Replying to #5727 (comment)

did you ever fix this issue? i have it right now.

[nmirthes]

I've been experiencing this for a while now with a Unity3D-based game, The Long Dark, and now just recently 7 Days to Die. Both games had crashed with an out of memory prior to updating to Unity 2021.3.x LTS but started working as of that release. Bad stutter without the overlay, but fine with thew overlay for both games.

Using Ubuntu 22.04 on Intel/Nvidia currently.

[nmirthes]

I've noticed while troubleshooting something else that the Steam overlay libs aren't loaded when a game is launched directly from it's top-level directory. No overlay and no stutter, regardless of whether it's enabled in the UI or not.

[ryanfill]

Seeing this same thing on valheim. Latest PopOS with Nvidia drivers.

[ryanfill]

Confirmed turning ON steam overlay fixed the issue for me. shrug

[HoovySimulator2]

Huh, I'm on Mint 22, using nvidia-driver-550 version 550.120-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 (the latest available to me as of writing) and I got this same problem too!
(I'm currently testing if the same solution works too!)

Though ironically I remember disabling Steam Overlay because it caused an issue where DRG would become slower and slower if I opened the overlay too many times...

Update: The same solution works too. Stuttering after time is gone after enabling it again!

[DominickCobb-rs]

@HoovySimulator2 and @ryanfill this is likely the issue: #11446