Hey everyone, I’m running a high-end gaming rig on Kubuntu 24.10 with KDE Plasma 6 (Wayland) and an Nvidia RTX3070, but I’ve noticed that games using Proton aren’t pushing my GPU to its full potential. Even though nvidia_smi shows increased activity—with fans ramping up and higher usage—the game performance is off: textures sometimes load poorly, and settings like ray tracing may be disabled despite stable framerates. I’m looking for insights or suggestions on what to check or tweak. Any ideas?
5 Answers
One of the first things to verify is the version of Steam you’re running. I had a similar hiccup when I was using the Discover version instead of any packaged snap release. It might sound trivial, but sometimes the package source can affect how Proton interacts with drivers.
I ran into a similar modern performance barrier on an AMD rig, where certain games got capped at lower fps on some distros versus others. Even though my setup was different, it underlines how distro-specific quirks (or even using the Flatpak Steam version) can lead to unexpected performance issues. It might be helpful to experiment with different Proton versions or launch options if you haven’t already.
A basic, but often overlooked, tip: ensure that secure boot in your BIOS is disabled. When secure boot is active, sometimes Nvidia’s drivers won’t load correctly, which can lead to performance issues—even if everything seems up to date. It solved a massive slowdown on my laptop, so definitely double-check that.
I’ve read that the Arch wiki has some neat tricks for enabling ray tracing with Nvidia on Proton. That said, since you’re on a Debian/Ubuntu derivative like Kubuntu, you might have to tweak those recommendations a bit. It could still be worth a look if you’re comfortable adapting the settings.
Definitely. Arch-based guides can be a goldmine, but just be mindful of potential differences in config on Ubuntu-based systems.
I had a similar experience on Windows too, where my GPU wasn’t hitting full capacity because V-sync was throttling the performance, even though the FPS counter said otherwise. After turning V-sync off and adjusting my screen refresh settings, things smoothed out considerably. Might not be the exact issue on Linux, but it’s worth checking out if a setting is limiting your GPU usage.
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was double-checking. I’m on the Discover version, so at least that’s ruled out.