Remote Play performance cripples as soon as the streaming host monitor/display is turned off

steamopen AMD driversStreaming

ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10149 · opened 2023-10-18 by tgurr · updated 2026-07-23 · 5 comments · github

Ttgurr 2023-10-18 github

Your system information

Steam client version (build number or date): 1697508377
Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Exherbo
Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
GPU: [AMD/ATI] Navi 32 [Radeon RX 7700 XT / 7800 XT] (rev c8)
Driver: AMD AMD Radeon Graphics (gfx1101, LLVM 16.0.6, DRM 3.54, 6.5.7)
Driver version: Mesa 23.2.1
linux-firmware: 20230919
Host desktop session: KDE Plasma 5.27.8 X11

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

I noticed that Remote Play has a horrible performance which made just navigating in the Big Picture Mode pretty much a hassle, it turned out that I had to leave my monitor/display connected to the streaming host switched on. As soon as I switch it off the performance suddenly degrades. I haven't done much with Steam Remote Play lately since I got an AMD card but I can't remember it being a problem at all for years when using an NVIDIA card so I my guess is some kind of powersafe feature kicks in when no display is active/connected to the GPU. So if this a known problem and there's just a setting I need to set somewhere please let me know, on a quick search I couldn't find anything that seemed relevant to me.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

Start Remote Play via Steam Link on e.g. an Android TV
Turn of display/monitor on the streaming host to prevent wasting energy and have a longer lifetime of the display/monitor
See the performance immediately starting to crawl observed on the Remote Play client so that even just navigating BPM is a pain

Additional information

Distribution default: /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf

Section "OutputClass"
        Identifier "AMDgpu"
        MatchDriver "amdgpu"
        Driver "amdgpu"
        Option "HotplugDriver" "amdgpu"
EndSection

Manual settings: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf

Section "OutputClass"
        Identifier "amdgpu"
        MatchDriver "amdgpu"
        Driver "amdgpu"
        Option "HotplugDriver" "amdgpu"
        Option "TearFree" "true"
        Option "VariableRefresh" "true"
        #Option "AsyncFlipSecondaries" "true"
EndSection

Sstevenj 2024-05-12 github

I am seeing the exact same thing under Wayland

Ttmarques 2025-07-15 github

I don't know which version of Steam it was but I had more than one Android device, with different versions (8 and 5) running very well. I always turned off the monitor and was always on Windows 11.

Android TV had some buffering issues, may have been a network problem.

Then a while back, I started having issues on Android devices, where with the monitor turned of, the streaming device would have a black screen but you could still hear Big Picture moving on the receiving end. Sometimes I had to go to the streaming PC and manually alt-tab to the game and it would work.

Right now, I am on Windows 11, exactly as this thread is describing: monitor off, you have picture but the performance is incredibly bad and everything lags. Monitor turned on and it goes normal immediately.

I am on an older Nvidia 660 now but I also had these issues with a Radeon R9 290, though there the screen was black.

I have tested the same machine running Linux, with the R290, and the game on the streaming PC would also start micro-stuttering as soon as Remote Play started. As far as I can tell, it was using hardware encoding and the PC was not stressed as this was an old game. (I could SSH and monitor through htop)

P.S.: There is a Display option on W11 that is "Minimize windows when monitor is disconnected". I think this may have been the culprit of the black screens but performance is still erratic, as described.

MMatthias-vdE 2025-07-15 github

I'm having the same issue on Bazzite/Fedora Kinoite.

Ddmchmk 2026-03-12 github

+1 here

NixOS 25.11
Gnome 49
Wayland
Linux Kernel 6.19.3
Mesa Gallium driver 25.2.6 for AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (radeonsi, navi21, LLVM 21.1.7, DRM 3.64, 6.19.3)
Steam version: 1769025840

116BitWonder 2026-07-23 github

Getting the same behavior on my PC too.

Operating System: CachyOS Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.7.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.28.0
Qt Version: 6.11.1
Kernel Version: 7.1.4-1-cachyos (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor
Memory: 64 GiB of RAM (60.2 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
Graphics Processor 2: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D 8-Core Processor
Manufacturer: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
Product Name: MS-7E12
System Version: 1.0
Steam Version: 1784778118

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