Arc A750 and Linux Gaming

[ayon]

Description

I use Linux for my daily usage but a few days ago I tried to install Counter-Strike 2 through Steam, and the experience was really bad. I was using the default graphics settings, which is high, and it crashes after every 10 minutes of playing the game. The frame rate stays between 90-100, and the game was not smooth at all.

So, I thought maybe I need graphics drivers to run the game smoothly. But the thing is I had all the open-source drivers installed already on my system; some of them are mesa, intel media driver, libva-intel-driver, vulkan-intel, xorg-server, and xorg-init. I also tried with Proton, but it makes everything worse. One thing I would like to mention is that, a year ago people were getting like ~400 fps. Now, if we compare this with Windows, there is no comparison. Windows beats Linux in gaming every way possible, not specifically on this graphics card but many others too. However, the difference in performance with Intel Arc graphics cards is too high.

Not only that, but many Linux-native games also perform badly. Another thing I would like to mention, not sure if it is relevant to the topic, MangoHud, a software similar to MSI Afterburner that helps us track the performance of hardware, does not show the VRAM usage while gaming. And, I was unable to find any other way to track my VRAM usage with any other software.

Specifications

• System(s): NixOS, ArchLinux, and Kubuntu
• DE: Plasma (Wayland and X11)
• WM: kwin
• Kernel: 6.6.71
• CPU: 13th Gen Intel i5-13400F (16) @ 4.600GHz
• GPU: Intel DG2 [Arc A750]
• Memory: 16 GB

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for reaching out and sharing your experience regarding gaming performance with Counter-Strike 2 and other games on Linux with your Intel Arc A750 graphics card. 

To further investigate the issue, please answer the following questions:

• Are you using Wine to run the application?
• Have you updated your graphics driver to the latest version? If not, please see https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/747008/intel-arc-graphics-driver-ubuntu.html
• Are the crashes accompanied by error messages or logs in systemd, dmesg, or jorunalctl?

Please generate an SSU report to help me further analyze important details on your system. To generate the SSU report, please refer to the article: Intel® System Support Utility for the Linux* Operating System. Please send us the generated SSU.txt file.

I look forward to your response!

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Hey, thanks for the response.

Let me answer your questions first:

• I was not using Wine and never did before to play Counter-Strike 2.
• Yeah, I did, and as you know, when you install Arch, it always gives the latest packages available there.
• I have to disappoint you at this point, and sorry that I forgot to check if there are any error messages or save the logs. However, as I was using the terminal to launch Steam, it did show some logs and errors while playing/using that specific package. There were no critical errors, if I remember correctly.
• Currently, I'm on Clear Linux but will move back to NixOS soon. Yesterday, I was on Ubuntu. Since Ubuntu has official support for Steam, I thought I should give it a try. Sadly, the performance was worse on Ubuntu. I followed the instructions on this page: https://dgpu-docs.intel.com/driver/client/overview.html and installed all the drivers, including that one unfree driver.

The SSU Report:

In Clear Linux, it says, "This product is not supported on this operating system." But I was still able to run and got this. Let me know if there is any specific distro I should use so that I can help with enough information.

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for your response and for providing additional details. I would need more time to further investigate this. I will get back to you once I have an appropriate resolution.

I sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding.

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon, 

Thank you for patiently waiting. I would like to clarify the following:

• I would like to confirm if you are using Wayland?
• Have you tried using X11 instead?
• Have you tried to remove the -vulkanflag while playing the game?
• Have you tried to minimize or close background tasks while playing the game?

If you would like to share more details from what you've initially shared, please feel free to do so.

I look forward to your response!

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Hey, here are some answers for your questions.

1. Many of the distributions nowadays provides Wayland support. Most of the time I only used KDE Plasma and Gnome. And both of them comes with default Wayland and (secondary) X11 support (in newer versions of gnome, it completely removed x11). Currently I am using KDE Plasma which provides both X11 and Wayland but I use Wayland most of the time.
2. I have tried playing on X11 but it was the same performance or maybe a little bit worse.
3. I am not aware of that specific flag. But, what I have understood is that "-vulkanflag" enables Vulkan while opening a software. If that is the case I think, I did use Vulkan as is the default. But yeah, I never explicitly mentioned that flag or any flag related to Vulkan.
4. Usually, when I tried playing or using Steam I barely used any other software in the background.

Currently, I am not playing any games. Out of frustration, I did not install Steam/ CS2 in my current distribution. One thing I may have mentioned before which is, other than playing games everything else works just fine. In daily usage, I never encountered any crashes. Again, please let me know, if I should be in any specific distribution, I would love to help. Currently, I am on NixOS.

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for answering the following questions. With that being said, I will now further investigate this and will get back to you if I have information available.

I sincerely appreciate your patience as we work through this.

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

I upgraded my kernel from 6.6.74 to 6.13.0. Someone was telling me that arc graphics cards works better on 6.13. So after testing, I figured out that is not true but a myth. I met another person who uses Linux with the hardware as mine i.e. Arc A750. He also tested with this GPU and various types of drivers including XE graphics drivers. Whatever, ultimately he did not gain anything because using XE graphics drivers do not improve any performance. What I did recently is that, downloaded 3 games including CS2. Rest of the two games are The Finals which uses VKD3D uses and does not support Vulkan but it is officially available for Linux and Sven Co-op which uses OpenGL. I tried using mangohud to monitor the performance. And, if someone wants to monitor gpu usage or temperature using mangohud with intel graphics it requires an extra package called intel-gpu-tools/ intel_gpu_top. But sadly on NixOS the process of setting that is not that simple. So I was unable to configure that. However, while trying out the games I also recorded my screen and uploaded them on YouTube. Let me know if those screen records can be useful. But in short these game is playable if someone plays on Medium or Low. Another thing I should mention even though CS2 is a native game on Linux it does not perform well on every hardware/ graphics cards as per some community posts. And when CS:GO turned into CS2 the performance on linux went down significantly.

[SeanD_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Can you provide me with the three YouTube links you mentioned? It will indeed help our understanding of the issue.

Best Regards,

Sean D.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Note: The time I recorded these videos, I was not able to fix Mangohud not showing GPU usage. In short and I understood, intel graphics do not let any third-party software to get the information about VRAM usage without explicitly mentioned. So I fixed that and it was using 99-100% of the GPU all the time while playing games. And also, showing vram usage with Mangohud on NixOS is not possible for now for it is built.

Here are the video links (pardon me for the thumbnails),
The Finals: https://youtu.be/Pvpyhvg0pNQ 
Counter Strike 2: https://youtu.be/-PdGEcxpkeo 

Recently, I tried another distribution named OpenMandriva Lx, which gave me a better performance than another other distro I have been to. It performance difference is not huge but noticeable (~10 fps). The Information about that system is that, it uses Xorg and RPM, based on Mandrake Linux, Kernel 6.12.9. Currently, I

Reference: https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud/issues/1082 

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for providing the requested links. This would greatly help us further investigate the issue being encountered moving forward. I will need more time to further investigate the issue and will get back to you once I have an appropriate resolution.

I sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we look into this.

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[Ernesto_C_Intel1]

Hi @ayon,

Apologies for the delayed response, I'm still actively investigating the performance issue that you've raised. However, we require a bit more time to work on your request to provide a comprehensive solution.

I appreciate your patience and understanding during this process. Please rest assured that I will keep you updated with any progress and aim to resolve this matter as swiftly as possible.

Regards,

Ernesto C.

Intel Customer Support Engineer

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for patiently waiting. To further investigate, please provide the necessary details:

• What are the average MangoHUD results that he is using while playing Counter Strike 2?
• Lastly, may you share the MangoHUD configuration that you are currently using?

I look forward to your response!

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Hello,

For some authentication difficulties, I was unable to log into my Intel community account. And I had to reset my password to log in. However, here are the answers for your questions.

1. I did not use any custom configuration for MangoHUD while playing Counter Strike 2 or any other games. But I did use a command to give MangoHUD the access to know whatever is going on with my GPU. Which I mentioned in one of my previous replies, Reference: https://github.com/flightlessmango/MangoHud/issues/1082.
2. Currently, I am not playing any games, so there isn't any configuration.

Note: When I recorded those videos, I was in NixOS. When informed about all these, I was in OpenMandriva ROME. And, currently, I'm on Arch Linux. Let me know if you guys need any other information from me, regarding this issue.

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for getting back to us and sharing the details! We sincerely appreciate your patience and for the additional context regarding your system changes and MangoHUD setup.

To ensure we have a clear picture of the issue being encountered, I would like to request additional information:

• Since you've switched distros, have you observed any differences in CS2's FPS or stability across them? Or does the issue remain identical regardless of the OS?
• If you have further information that you would like to share that may contribute to our investigation, please feel free to do so.
• Are there other distros that you are going to test the issue on?

Additionally, I will take note that with the videos that you're using NixOS.

I look forward to your response!

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Counter-Strike 2 and MangoHUD

Hey, I just installed Counter-Strike 2 and MangoHUD again. Now I feel a bit embarrassed because MangoHUD works just fine out of the box with all its functions. Probably in their latest updates, they fixed the issue I was facing in my previous distributions.

Anyway, there is another package called Goverlay, which helped me change the presets for MangoHUD in a GUI. I will talk about this in detail at the bottom of this reply. Now, let's answer your questions first:

Answers to Your Questions

1. I think Xorg still performs better than Wayland if the distribution you are using has really optimized that session. Most distributions nowadays primarily push Wayland. From what I have used so far, I found OpenMandriva Lx (OMLx) the best choice for Xorg. The rest of the distributions (mostly Wayland sessions) perform about the same.
2. A rolling-release distribution works better with an Arc GPU. For example, OMLx (ROME) or Arch, or at least a rolling-release repository for the package manager.
3. Probably yes. I really wanted to try out Bazzite, but it looks a bit bloated. However, I also want to try out Fedora, OpenSUSE, CachyOS, etc.

My Experience

After downloading Steam and Counter-Strike 2, I opened it, and the performance was amazing—just like OMLx. However, after rebooting my system, my Xorg session broke. Then I logged into the Plasma Wayland session and uninstalled the package xf86-video-intel and its dependencies, which fixed the blank screen problem.

But this time, the performance was awful, which you can see in one of my videos that I uploaded on YouTube. Then I tried the game on a Wayland session, which worked fine but not as well as my first experience. It was not bad either, and I also uploaded that on YouTube. Here are the links if you want to check them out:

• Xorg Session
• Wayland Session

System Information

• Kernel: 6.13.4
• DE: Plasma 6.3.2
• MangoHUD: v0.8.0
• Steam: Pacman

[ShawnM_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for sharing your detailed experience and insights regarding the performance differences between Xorg and Wayland, as well as your observations with various distributions and gaming performance. I appreciate the links to your videos, I'll be using these for my analysis regarding this matter.

I'll currently be reviewing the information you've provided and will conduct a thorough investigation to address your concern. I'll get back to you with my findings and recommendations. Although I do ask that you give me some time to conduct this investigation.

Best regards,

Shawn Kevin M.

Intel Customer Support Technician.

[RobbieR_Intel]

Hello ayon,

Thank you for providing the necessary information. I would like to gladly inform you that we are currently working to re-create the issue, however I would like to set the expectation that only Ubuntu is the recognized distro for the Intel Arc as of the moment. Thus, our investigation would only be focused on this linux flavor.

I sincerely appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through a solution on the low performance with the A750 while playing Counter Strike 2.

If you would like to add more information that may help us further investigate this, it would be wholeheartedly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Robbie R.

Intel Customer Support Technician

[ayon]

Thanks. I think, if intel release an update and if the source code remains open-source, people from other distribution should be able to yank that and apply to their distributions easily. Or maybe, there are other ways which I am not aware of. However, as we have seen SteamOS and other distributions that are solely focused on gaming uses base Arch or Fedora (RHEL). It's probably because of the bleeding-edge rolling release. But I understand, Ubuntu is indeed one of them most well-known Linux distributions.

[Ernesto_C_Intel1]

Hi @ayon, 

Thank you for responding to my technician. I'm contacting you on his behalf. I'm still working to re-create the issue you've experienced and simultaneously, investigating the root cause of the issue. 

I'll provide you an update as soon as possible. 

Regards, 

Ernesto C. 

Intel Customer Support Engineer

[Ernesto_C_Intel1]

Hi @ayon, 

Thank you for your patience while I work on this case. You previously shared two YouTube videos, but they are currently private and inaccessible. Can you provide the videos through another method, it would help me understand the issue better. Alternatively, can you set the videos to unlisted and email us the links, if this option is okay let me know so I can send an email to collect the links.

Additionally, I would like to know what is your current graphics settings. I'm running my test to investigate your issue using the settings below:

 

Since the crash is OS related, you may need to coordinate with Ubuntu community to address the Xorg session breaking.

Regards, 

Ernesto C. 

Intel Customer Support Engineer