I purchased a system76 Thelio Mira Elite With a AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. I kinda regret not going with Nvidia at this point but it is what it is. I primarily use it as a developer workstation, but want to play games on it as well so I can be rid of my windows box.

I didn’t expect it to be able to play the latest and greatest games but I did expect it to be able to play older titles reasonably well. Games launch from steam and seem to work, but I’m getting between 0 and 10 fps on the title screen of Kerbal Space Program. Other games are similarly functional but poorly performing.

Where do I start? How can I ensure my GPU is being leveraged? Is this as good as it gets?

  • zamithal@programming.devOPEnglish
    1·
    24 hours ago

    looks like it is.

    ii  libvulkan1:amd64                        1.3.280.0-1pop1~1722439676~22.04~a41a7d6                     amd64        Vulkan loader library
ii  libvulkan1:i386                         1.3.280.0-1pop1~1722439676~22.04~a41a7d6                     i386         Vulkan loader library
ii  mesa-vulkan-drivers:amd64               24.0.3-1pop1~1711635559~22.04~7a9f319                        amd64        Mesa Vulkan graphics drivers
ii  mesa-vulkan-drivers:i386                24.0.3-1pop1~1711635559~22.04~7a9f319                        i386         Mesa Vulkan graphics drivers
ii  vulkan-tools                            1.3.204.0+dfsg1-1                                            amd64        Miscellaneous Vulkan utilities
➜  ~

    The whole log is too large for lemmy, but here is a pastebin link: https://pastebin.com/sxU2QYTc

    System76 is advising I go full nuclear and reinstall from recovery partition, which I don’t really think would fix anything and I’m hesitant to do.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      21 hours ago

      Yeah, you have Vulkan and Mesa and the GPU drivers are in the kernel. That’s the whole stack (along with Proton).

      Before reinstalling completely, run a full system upgrade, I took this from system76s support page:

      sudo apt update
# configure any packages partially setup 
sudo dpkg --configure -a 
# fix any missing package dependency 
sudo apt install -f 
# upgrade all packages and dependencies to newest in release 
sudo apt full-upgrade 
# make sure the `pop-desktop` meta package is installed 
sudo apt install pop-desktop

      You’re also likely using some flatpak applications, so:

      flatpak update

      Then reboot.

      They want you to reinstall because walking you through a fresh install is just more time efficient for their support staff than trying to troubleshoot system configuration problems (imagine the possible things a random user could change x.x).

      • zamithal@programming.devOPEnglish
        2·
        20 hours ago

        Well, that didn’t work so I proceeded with the fresh install.

        It works right out of the box. No strange behavior and it’s lightning fast. I’m both relieved to have it working and a little sad that the answer was “kill it with fire” as I’ve learned nothing.

        Anyway, thank you for your help. :) Time to go get everything up again

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          19 hours ago

          Dude, the number of times I’ve resorted to a reinstall are innumerable. You know a bit more than you did yesterday and that isn’t nothing.

          If you want to try a new project that’ll need tinkering with (but won’t break your existing install) look at gamescope.

          Currently it’s the only way to get HDR and variable refresh rate to work. It’s what Valve made to get those features into the Steamdeck.

          You just run it with

          gamescope -- %command%

          In your steam launch options. You’ll need to look up the options (otherwise it defaults to 720p@60hz). Ex:

          gamescope -w 2160 -- %command%

          For 4k. There’s a switch for HDR too but I don’t remember it without looking it up. You can use gamescope to enable FSR in any game, it can apply reshade shaders (so, things like anti aliasing in games that don’t have it natively).

          Other than that, any issues you have with a particular game can usually be solved by looking at protondb.com

          Keep using the GE-Proton builds of proton for best results.

          Have fun 🤓

          • zamithal@programming.devOPEnglish
            2·
            15 hours ago

            Variable refresh rate is cool but 99% of my games are low res or 2d pixel art, so I haven’t been too interested in HDR. Very cool though will tinker with it :)