Any ideas why I'm getting horrible FPS in Death Stranding on Linux? (Proton)

Gaming
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1

For some strange reason I’m getting absolutely terrible FPS (~20fps) in Death Stranding through Proton.

I checked ProtonDB and I can’t find any reports about this. Here are my specs:

  • Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master
  • Ryzen 5950X
  • Radeon 6900XT
  • 64GB RAM @ 3600Mhz

(I should mention I upgraded from 3950X to 5950X a few days ago and it didn’t affect the FPS problem in any way)

Software:

  • Arch Linux (kernel 5.12.2)

  • Drivers:

    $ pacman -Q | egrep "mesa|vulkan|vlk|amd"
amd-ucode 20210426.fa0efef-1
amdvlk 2021.Q2.2-1
lib32-amdvlk 2021.Q2.2-1
lib32-mesa 21.1.0-1
lib32-vulkan-icd-loader 1.2.176-1
lib32-vulkan-radeon 21.1.0-1
libva-mesa-driver 21.1.0-1
mesa 21.1.0-1
mesa-demos 8.4.0-4
mesa-vdpau 21.1.0-1
vulkan-headers 1:1.2.177-1
vulkan-icd-loader 1.2.176-1
vulkan-radeon 21.1.0-1
vulkan-tools 1.2.172-1
xf86-video-amdgpu 19.1.0-2

It seems like I should be getting as-good or better FPS than most of the reports on ProtonDB, yet the game is completely unplayable for me.

I have seen reports on ProtonDB using the Radeon 6900XT with a 5000 series Ryzen CPU, so presumably the recent-ness of my hardware shouldn’t be a problem.

I have tried:

  • Lowering all graphics settings
  • Reducing resolution to 1280x800
  • Fullscreen mode and windowed mode
  • Enabling/disabling VSYNC
  • Limiting FPS in the game settings
  • Various Proton versions
    • Proton-6.5-GE-2
    • Proton-6.3-3
    • Proton-5.13-6
  • X11 and Wayland (i3 and Sway)

Nothing has had any impact of the FPS, I’m always hovering around 20 fps.

I have checked my GPU activity using radeontop while running the game and it’s barely being utilized. Meanwhile, the game is maxing out 1 CPU core. This makes me think there’s some kind of CPU bottleneck. But why does it only affect me?

Does anybody have any suggestions for what the issue could be or what more I could do to troubleshoot?

2

Your hardware is too new and maybe a newer kernel would help?

What OS and kernel version are you using?

3

Oops! My bad, I forgot to include software versions. I updated my post.

I just noticed mesa 21.1.0 is now available in the Arch repos, I’ll try to upgrade.

EDIT: Updated my system, and updated the original post with the new package versions.

4

12 cores may be triggering THE BUG,

Limit it to 6 or 8 and see how it goes.

example

WINEDLLOVERRIDES=winedbg.exe=d schedtool -a 0,1,2,3,4,5 -e %command%
5

Damn, that got me real hopeful :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

Unfortunately it didn’t work, seems to be successfully limited to 6 cores but I’m still getting 14 fps:

image
image2485×1279 627 KB

Very much appreciate the tip though, keep’em coming!

6

Are you using DX11 or DX12? tried either? also have you tried proton experimental?

Also download latest proton-ge-6.8-1

Or TKG 6.7+

Wine 6.5 and below have some major bugs for these newer games.

7

I installed and tested proton-ge-6.8-1 now, same exact issue still.

I would like to test DX11/12 but I can’t find any options for this. How do I control this?

I have no idea, how do I control this? I can’t find any settings for this ingame.

I did test this at some point and I had the same issue.

I did this now, it required me to delete my wine prefix so I had to start a new game. Still getting around 20 FPS :frowning:

EDIT: I tried PROTON_USE_WINED3D, which made things a lot worse, getting around 7 FPS. Then I tried disabling DX12 using PROTON_NO_D3D12, which caused the game to fail to launch:

image

So I guess disabling DX12 is not an option with this game :frowning:

8

No need to delete the games savegame folder you know. You can delete everything around it. Check your tashbin for those files recycled if there is still time.

Unfortunately I don’t have this game so can’t test. I assume you set NVAPI’s to disabled?

Found this:

And for reference on various misc things related to game (includes save path info etc).
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Death_Stranding

9

Going by the protondb site you can see most people with the newer SIENNA_CICHLID GPU’s are having significant issues. I have a 6800XT so if I owned the game there be reason to suggest it be bad experience for me also.

Unfortunately I’ve already spent almost $150 on games this past month so won’t be blowing any more cash for quite some time.
(also I doubt I would play this game much as I’ve seen complete play-through already)

1 Like
10

I’m not sure what SIENNA_CICHLID means, but I tried swapping my Radeon 6900 XT for my old Radeon 5700 XT, and the frame rate issue was unchanged. The GPU is still barely utilized.

11

Yeah I have set up save game sync to my Dropbox folder now. I hadn’t played the game much yet, as it’s basically unplayable, so it was primarily annoying because of the insanely long loading times :slight_smile:

I don’t know what this means, could you elaborate? If you’re talking about a graphics setting, I have reduced every graphics setting to the lowest setting, or “disabled” if available.

On a different note, I have figured out a major cause of my terrible frame rates. Apparently you can have multiple different Vulkan drivers installed simultaneously. I happened to have both vulkan-radeon (RADV) and amdvlk installed simultaneously, and Death Stranding defaulted to using amdvlk. After switching to the RADV driver I am getting significantly better frame rates, almost levels I would consider playable. Instead of 13-18 FPS I am now getting 20-40 FPS.

According to radeontop I am still barely utilizing my GPU though, so there are still other things bottlenecking me.

12

Sienna cichlid is the codename for the 6900xt chip.

NVAPI is nVidia Stuff

1 Like
13

nvapi.dll or nvapi64.dll

WINEDLLOVERRIDES=“nvapi,nvapi64=d” %command%

I THINK (Steam)

14

Hey, sorry for the slow reply here :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: I managed to forward my 6900 XT to my Windows gaming VM, and I’ve been playing Death Stranding at an average of 150 FPS for a while, at 5120x1440 with everything cranked to ultra.

I tried the overrides you suggested on Linux, and unfortunately it didn’t change anything. Still rocking a steady 20 FPS.

15

UPDATE: I fixed it by switching pci-e slots, my card was in a downgraded slot that was not sufficient enough for playing Death Stranding or literally any other game properly, make sure to put your gpus always in the x16 slot that also has the right speeds, there could be x16 slots but only with 4 lanes on pci-e 3.0 for example this will degrade performance heavily

Hey there, it’s a late entry to this game, but I was affected aswell by this problem.

My setup:
Ryzen 7 5800X
RX 6600

but for some reason it started working as it should some days ago, I think a new gpu driver fixed the issue.

Devices:
========
GPU0:
        apiVersion         = 4206796 (1.3.204)
        driverVersion      = 92274691 (0x5800003)
        vendorID           = 0x1002
        deviceID           = 0x73ff
        deviceType         = PHYSICAL_DEVICE_TYPE_DISCRETE_GPU
        deviceName         = AMD RADV DIMGREY_CAVEFISH
        driverID           = DRIVER_ID_MESA_RADV
        driverName         = radv
        driverInfo         = Mesa 22.0.3
        conformanceVersion = 1.3.0.0
        deviceUUID         = 00000000-0600-0000-0000-000000000000
        driverUUID         = 414d442d-4d45-5341-2d44-525600000000

If anyones curious, this is the vulkaninfo --summary with the current driver and vulkan api in use, this is working for me, gpu is finally being used!