protonscr

Very high CPU usage with hardware acceleration enabled

steamopen Steam clientDistro Family: FedoraWeb Component
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#9675 · opened 2023-06-19 by an9949an · updated 2023-08-08 · 5 comments · github
Aan9949an 2023-06-19 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1686880776
  • Distribution: Fedora 37
  • Opted into Steam client beta?: No
  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes
  • Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz
  • GPU: Intel + Nvidia RTX 3050 hybrid, steam use intel
  • Sysinfo

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

New steam UI utilizes up to 40% of CPU a few minutes after opening. As I can see 2 processes with the name steamwebhelper do it.

There is no such issue if hardware acceleration is disabled.

Also steamwebhelper utilizes 50% of intel GPU during these few minutes (I see it in intel_gpu_top).

Steps for reproducing this issue:

  1. Run steam with hardware acceleration enabled
  2. Observe CPU usage
PPinkysBrain 2023-06-23 github

I can no longer reproduce, but my flatpak version locked up around one core when minimized to system tray, until I ran it once with -vgui, then the problem was gone for the new UI too for whatever reason (acceleration on or off). It's "only" around twice the CPU time of idle firefox, now.

Ddmitryash 2023-06-24 github

Easily reproducible. Moreover when steam is hidden it also used exact one CPU core.

Ccsebal 2023-07-06 github

I also noticed the issue, though I am not sure it is related to hardware acceleration, as I have that turned off.

This morning, with steam "closed" (only active in notification area), I came back to my computer to see that the web helper was hogging 2 cores. one pegged at 100% CPU usage, the other around 50%.

Steam 1687386907 on Arch Linux with 6.3.5 zen kernel + 5.27.5 KDE Plasma on a R9-5950X with 64G of RAM

Repro:

  • Launch steam,
  • switch to store,
  • close steam windows (only leave the the notification icon)
  • leave running for an extended period of time

Symptom:
Even after just having done the above, steamwebhelper keeps using ~30-35% on one core and 15-18% on another, when it should really both be 0 or close to 0.

Fflurl 2023-07-08 github

I have the same problem with steam utilizing more than 1 core when the window is closed. Disabling hardware acceleration doesn't make any difference, neither does using the beta version. Running steam -vgui solves it and cpu usage is near zero.
Steam system info

Mmpupovac 2023-08-08 github

My workaround for this is to pause the processes and for some reason, this works:

/usr/bin/sudo killall -STOP steamwebhelper

for some reason, this shuts down all the processes (which I don't need anyway, i'm only using steam to run the game via the command line) and they no longer respawn.

Nothing extracted yet.