When I play games through Steam, they work well for 10-30 minutes at 30-60 fps. Then, periodically (about once every 5-10 minutes), the game’s frame rate will drop to 2-12 fps and everything (the game and other applications) will “chug” for 1-2 minutes then return to normal. Rinse, repeat.
When I look at the log, I see a bunch of these kinds of warnings appearing:
steam[7411]: g_main_context_push_thread_default: assertion 'acquired_context' failed
steam[7411]: g_main_context_pop_thread_default: assertion 'g_queue_peek_head (stack) == context' failed
kernel: x86/split lock detection: #AC: Cities.x64/8905 took a split_lock trap at address: 0x7f4eaa0cdf94
kernel: x86/split lock detection: #AC: Cities.x64/8906 took a split_lock trap at address: 0x7f4eaa0cdf94
Is this a Steam bug that needs to be reported or is there a way to correct this?
Without testing I would suggest you try using a different proton version with that game. Steam allows multiple versions of proton to be installed and the user can select a specific version for each game. It may be proton or may not, but that seems worth a try.
I was running War and Thunder and had to revert to a version of proton several levels back to stabilize operation.
Also, I just tried a non-Steam game and the same happened. So it’s not Steam-specific.
One thing I notice is that the fan doesn’t seem to be spinning up to max when gaming. I hear it, but it doesn’t seem to be as high as it can go. It might be overheating and frequency scaling to prevent damage?
Now the question is - why is the fan not spinning up to max speed? It’s seems to go from low to medium but not high.
I figured out what the problem is: It is overheating. Specifically, the CPU is reaching the thermal warning limit and throttling. The system fan, on automatic, is only going up to about 4200 RPM even though it is capable of 6100 RPM max. In order to get it up to the max, I have to control it manually. It didn’t used to be like this. Anyone know how to fix the automated fan being limited in speed?