protonscr

GPU acceleration disabled despite being enabled in settings

steamopen Distro Family: ArchWeb Component
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10084 · opened 2023-09-24 by rhoot · updated 2025-05-06 · 5 comments · github
Rrhoot 2023-09-24 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1694466342
  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Endeavour OS
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: No (but I tested beta as well)
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
  • Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
  • GPU: AMD RX 6900 XT (RADV)

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Enabling GPU acceleration in Steam settings appears to have no effect what so ever. The steam UI remains exceedingly sluggish in both desktop and big picture modes. Especially at a large window size. Opening a popup that blurs the background (e.g news or achievements) in the Library view makes the FPS drop to low single digits.

I eventually found this in webhelper.txt, which may explain it:

[2023-09-23 21:45:00] Browser - launching child process with: /home/johan/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steamwebhelper --type=renderer --disable-seccomp-filter-sandbox --log-file=/home/johan/.local/share/Steam/logs/cef_log.txt --field-trial-handle=823699858905907602,18172577380390560174,131072 --enable-features=CastMediaRouteProvider --disable-features=SameSiteByDefaultCookies --disable-gpu-compositing --enable-blink-features=ResizeObserver,Worklet,AudioWorklet --disable-blink-features=Badging --lang=en-US --log-file=/home/johan/.local/share/Steam/logs/cef_log.txt --product-version=Valve Steam Client --buildid=1694466342 --steamid=0
[2023-09-23 21:45:00] Disabling GPU acceleration due to --disable-gpu-compositing (renderer)
[2023-09-23 21:45:00] Disabling GPU acceleration

I don't know what's causing --disable-gpu-compositing to be passed to the render process however. The GL/Vulkan drivers are installed as both 32-bit and 64-bit:

$ pacman -Q mesa vulkan-radeon lib32-mesa lib32-vulkan-radeon
mesa 1:23.1.7-1
vulkan-radeon 1:23.1.7-1
lib32-mesa 1:23.1.7-1
lib32-vulkan-radeon 1:23.1.7-1

Amdvlk is not installed:

$ pacman -Q amdvlk lib32-amdvlk
error: package 'amdvlk' was not found
error: package 'lib32-amdvlk' was not found

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Enable GPU acceleration in Steam's Interface settings.
  2. Restart Steam.
  3. GPU acceleration is still disabled.
Rrhoot 2023-09-24 github

I was able to find a workaround with some digging:

  1. Open ~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steam-runtime-heavy/run.sh
  2. At the bottom, replace exec "$@" with exec "$@" --use-gl=desktop

After doing the above (and restarting Steam) the UI is nice and snappy. Much more so than it's ever been since the new Steam UI was released. Big picture mode is also no longer laggy.

Ttlneondo 2024-08-27 github

Can confirm that the above workaround helped. Though I'm seeing even better results in terms of less graphical corruption from --use-gl=egl. Steam Web Helper seems to be crashing more though. This is on Nvidia's latest driver.

Ttlneondo 2024-08-27 github

And then after attempting to use Big Picture it looks like Hardware Accel is off again.

Ddabunginator 2025-05-02 github

I was able to find a workaround with some digging:

1. Open `~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_64/steam-runtime-heavy/run.sh`

2. At the bottom, replace `exec "$@"` with `exec "$@" --use-gl=desktop`

After doing the above (and restarting Steam) the UI is nice and snappy. Much more so than it's ever been since the new Steam UI was released. Big picture mode is also no longer laggy.

This solution isn't working for me anymore. Steam overwrites any changes that I make.

Rrhoot 2025-05-06 github

Looking at how that file is launched, it looks like you don't actually have to modify the file directly. You should be able to just launch steam with the same argument on the command line (steam --use-gl=desktop), using whatever preferred method you have for launching stuff. But I no longer seem to have this issue personally so I can't verify.

Nothing extracted yet.