protonscr

NieR: Automata crashes on startup

protonclosed
ValveSoftware/Proton#2428 · opened 2019-03-19 by l0b0 · updated 2019-03-20 · 7 comments · github
Ll0b0 2019-03-19 github

Compatibility Report

  • Name of the game with compatibility issues: NieR: Automata
  • Steam AppID of the game: 524220

System Information

  • GPU:

    $ lspci | grep VGA
    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM200 [GeForce GTX 980 Ti] (rev a1)
    
  • Driver/LLVM version: nvidia 418.43-7

  • Kernel version:

    $ uname --kernel-release 
    5.0.2-arch1-1-ARCH
    
  • Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/l0b0/b87bfad5db060bbfbce7250584b433c7

  • Proton version: 3.7-8

I confirm:

  • [x] that I haven't found an existing and relevant compatibility report for this game.
  • [x] that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-524220.log

Symptoms

After a few seconds a white window about 1500x1000 pixels shows up and another window displays the following error message:

ERROR : Graphic::Startup() FAILED. No Graphic Memory

Reproduction

  1. Install Nier:Automata for the first time.
  2. Run it right after it's installed.
Ddoitsujin 2019-03-19 github

Looks like your Nvidia driver isn't set up correctly, you currently seem to be using Nouveau:

    Driver:  nouveau NV120
    Driver Version:  4.3 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 18.3.4
Ll0b0 2019-03-19 github

I've been using Nouveau for some years now, including for games. I guess it's not supported by Proton?

Ddoitsujin 2019-03-19 github

Not really, the main issue in this case being that Nouveau has no Vulkan support. You need the proprietary driver for that.

Vvarris1 2019-03-19 github

I've been using Nouveau for some years now, including for games. I guess it's not supported by Proton?

No. IIRC Nouveau with Maxwell still has no reclocking (and as doitsujin mentioned, no Vulkan) support. Are you sure you've played games with nouveau before? It's hard to believe.

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2019-03-19 github

Hello @l0b0, you can avoid the need for need for a working vulkan driver by adding PROTON_USE_WINED3D11=1 %command% to the game's launch options to make it use the D3D11 to OpenGL render path, however, underwelming performance is expected when using that option compared to using vulkan and there is a lack of required signed firmware from nvidia to do reclocking with Maxwell refresh cards and nouveau.

HHonkingGoose 2019-03-19 github

@l0b0 For reference: here are the requirements to use Proton:
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/wiki/Requirements


The Nvidia Nouveau drivers are sadly in a very bad state for newer GPU's, because like kisak-valve said: there's no support for re-clocking the GPU, and that's necessary to get good performance out of your card.

It's quite literally a waste of money to use the Nouveau drivers for newer Nvidia GPU's, because you're not getting the performance you paid for. So if you want to keep using your Nvidia GPU for gaming, you really should use the proprietary driver.

See https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau-nvidia-eoy2018&num=1 for a comparison between Nouveau and the proprietary drivers. You can see that Nouveau performs a lot worse in nearly all gaming benchmarks, and only wins on some compute benchmarks.


Now the good news is, if you want to use open-source drivers; AMD's open-source mesa drivers are quite good these days. So if you use a recent AMD card like a RX580/RX590 or Vega 56/64 or Radeon VII, you can use the opensource mesa drivers and get competitive performance.
But to be honest, if you only care about performance; Nvidia still wins with a good margin with use of their proprietary driver.

You can check how the performance between AMD Mesa and Nvidia proprietary stacks up, so you can make a informed decision. See for example this recent benchmark of the GTX 1660 Ti versus some recent AMD cards: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nvidia-gtx1660ti-linux&num=3


I hope this information proves helpful for you. To be clear, I'm not bashing on your desire to use open-source drivers. I just want to put this information out there, so that you can inform yourself, and make your own choices. :+1:

Ll0b0 2019-03-20 github

Thank you all very much for this information! And a massive thank you for developing this - the last reason to keep Windows around is finally going away. I'll make sure to support a more open source-friendly GPU vendor next time. (I had naively thought that since there were open source drivers at all for both AMD and NVIDIA they would be approximately equal.)

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