Making my first comment on this site to echo this post so please tell me if I’m doing anything wrong. I tested ARC Raiders and the Windrose demo, both UE5 with the same results.
Also using a 7900XTX (XFX), and spent 3 weeks (Feb 4th - present) troubleshooting with every proton (Valve, GE and Cachy) with the exact same issues. I don’t think there’s a launch option I didn’t try. Tested on fresh installs of Arch/COSMIC, Arch/KDE (Cachy and standard), Arch/Cinnamon, PopOS & Linux Mint, both native in Wayland and Forcing x11 when applicable. I thought it was a Wayland issue but both display sessions fail, and the same results happen whether I use DX12 or force DX11.
My fix is close: using Arch/COSMIC and Proton Experimental is the most predictable and usable but Arch/KDE worked too. Ray Tracing off, Medium settings, FSR3 Balanced, 100FPS cap, VRR enabled in Display Settings and VSYNC off, reset mesa and steam shader/compatdata cache between each test, ReBAR, PBO and EXPO enabled, using:
RADV_PERFTEST=gpl VKD3D_CONFIG=no_async %command%
^This launch command alone keeps the game from crashing completely. But the frame times are still atrocious. It runs fine for 5-10 minutes but then consistently dips into the 30FPS range and constantly hitches until the game is closed again.
CPU and GPU render times don’t seem like they jump too much, staying at 4ms on average but jumping to 5-8ms at times and 9ms at extreme FPS lows.
Rest of the system is MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk, 7700X, 32GB 6000MT CL36 RAM, Samsung 980 NVME, 3440x1440 165hz monitor.
According to ProtonDB, users with the 6000 series, 9000 series and 7900XT have minimal issues and can get the game to run reliably. It seems the culprit is something with the shaders/vram on the 7900XTX specifically.
UPDATE ON THIS ISSUE:
Apparently it's a kernel bug, versions 6.18 and up are problematic with AMD cards and the issue is somehow related to power manager. Check the comments from this issue: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/14250#note_3255383
I'll close this one since it's a know issue and not related to the shader cache like I've described.
RADV_PERFTEST=gpl VKD3D_CONFIG=no_async %command%
This actually seemed to fix all my crashing UE5 games on SteamOS or Bazzite. Mesa 26.1.0. No matter the kernel but I can report further or create new issue.
I also have the 7900XTX
proton experimentalx1 2026-02RADV_PERFTEST=gplx2 2026-06VKD3D_CONFIG=no_asyncx2 2026-06
Compatibility Report
System Information
I confirm:
Symptoms
I've managed to reproduce this on Predecessor and Arc Raiders because they are the only UE games that I've got installed at the moment. So after a period of playing these games (which is VERY random, can be after 30 minutes or 3 hours), my PC freezes and it crashes the GPU drivers sending me to the login screen (I'm using Gnome but the same thing happens on KDE as well). Another weird symptom in Predecessor is that it takes A LOT to process the shaders when the game launches.
I've tried cleared mesa shader cache from /home/schmitz/.cache/mesa_shader_cache but it didn't help
I've tried with different proton version but to no avail (experimental, 10, 9, GE, proton-cachyos)
Reproduction
just run the games and the issue occurs randomly