Stuttering problem in a steam game, been trying everything to fix it but no success

Switching from windows 11, I choose Nobara 41 (based on Fedora 41) because I heard it already sets everything up for gaming, but when I play Foxhole, the game constantly stutter especially when I rotate my camera around. The stutter in some area of the game is so much worse that my fps would dip and the mangohud’s frametime graph would look like a seismograph. I have AMD Ryzen 5 5600 CPU, AMD Radeon RX 7600XT GPU, and 32GB of RAM. The spec is more than enough to play the game and I never had this problem when I was still using windows. I also tried playing another game but it ran smoothly so the stutter is not in all games.

By now I think I’ve tried more than 10 things to try to fix it:

  • Tried 4 different protons including the GE version
  • Added “gamemoderun %command%” in the launch option
  • Added LD_PRELOAD=“” alongside gamemoderun
  • Setting power management to performance and CoreCtrl to high
  • Set every graphic options to the lowest
  • Enabling/disabling vsync, adaptive sync, and my monitor’s freesync
  • Uncapping the game’s framerate, setting the framerate to match my monitor’s refresh rate which is 100hz
  • Turning off steam overlay
  • Enabling shader precache
  • Installed mesa-vulkan driver
  • Tried using gamescope but it made the stutter even worse
  • Tried using PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1 %command% but it made most of the game has black texture
  • Tried running the game under wine with Lutris but I can’t get past the main menu because the game refused to connect to the game’s server and it’s a online multiplayer game, so I couldn’t check whether the stutter is gone or not

And none of them made any difference even the slightest.

Here’s what my mangohud looks like when I rotate the camera:



I’ve searched the internet and it looks like no one’s having this problem. Anyone know what might be causing it? Is it CPU related because even at the lowest graphical setting I still got the stutter? Or is the game just still not perfect for Linux and there’s nothing I can do except wait? But no one mentions any stutter in the protondb so is there something that I miss? I’m at my wits end trying to solve this so any help would be greatly appreciated!

Make sure you have the steam overlay turned on.
When it is off stuttering has been reported by a number of people.
Does that help?

Unfortunately no, whether it’s on or off doesn’t make any difference. My steam overlay is always turned on, I tried turning it off because someone said to do it and see if it helps

I have a lot of games on Fedora. Most of them work well under WINE (I use Lutris to install them). A few refuse to work at all, and a few require some manual intervention.

You have tried many things. One thing I do not see that you have tried is various WINEtricks. I do not know what tricks to recommend, but that might be an area of inquiry you can pursue. You might be able to narrow it down if you can find what engine Foxhole is running on, and what DLLs etc it calls on in Windoze.

Foxhole uses Unreal Engine 4 DXVK D3D11, and here’s the full DXVK_HUD

I haven’t tried winetricks yet because the game refuses to connect to the server when it’s running under wine. Can you run multiplayer steam game under wine?

Steam’s version of Wine is called Proton. Foxhole shows as “playable” on Steam Deck on the Steam Store page.

You might find that configuring a different version of Proton for the game in Steam might help.

DXVK translates Direct 3D 11 to Vulkan. It also uses WINE to run on Linux.
Proton is Steam’s WINE implementation that also uses DXVK.

So you are using WINE already.

You say you have used Lutris, but it does not connect? Could this be a firewall issue?

The Sourceforge link above says “disable desktop effects on your compositor, as this can cause stuttering issues when games are GPU-bound.”

What desktop are you using? KDE is Nobara default?
How do launch (Steam) games on Nobara?

For further help you my wish to consult Reddit - Dive into anything or https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/

The only reference I can find to Foxhole on WineHQ is Foxhole War-Win64-Shipping.exe Problem - WineHQ Forums

Yeah I can’t enter the game past the main menu. I haven’t touch firewall settings after I install linux so I don’t know if I have to do something first with lutris.

For the DE I use KDE Plasma 6. There’s also kwin installed. What do you mean by disable desktop effect?

Also I did try asking in reddit and the official nobara discord. They gave me some ways to try that I included in this post but still nothing fixed the stutter. That’s why this is my last resort asking here because maybe there’s more linux veteran here that could help me

I don’t have KDE, but I found at plasma - How to deactivate all the desktop effects of KDE permanently? - Ask Ubuntu

System Settings > Hardware > Display and Monitor > Compositor

And uncheck Enable compositor on startup and reboot.

Firewall only blocks inbound connects by default, not outbound.

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Alright I’ll try doing that.

Oh also, in Lutris I just right click on the Foxhole game that is connected from steam and set the runner to wine there, so I didn’t install the windows version of steam provided by lutris here and download that version of the game there:

Might that be why I can’t connect to the game server?

Are you saying that in Lutris, you do not have Steam installed and running when you boot Foxhole? Yes that could be the reason it can’t connect. Lutris does provide some Steam functions (like download games) but I’m not the best person to discuss that with as I only run offline installers from GOG. https://forums.lutris.net/ might be the best place to find out if you want to use Lutris.

There is a much more complicated reason that Lutris can’t connect you detailed at Reddit - Dive into anything

I have steam installed, but it’s the linux version of steam, the one I installed with flatpak through nobara package manager. I don’t know if I need to install the lutris version of steam too in order to connect to Foxhole server, as for now I just added the game’s executable file that I downloaded through linux’s steam to lutris and tell it to run with wine.

Also I just tried to install the lutris steam but when I logged in, the steam store window just keeps closing and reopening, and the install progress never finished in the lutris debug window, I don’t know why that happened but I think I’ll try asking more about lutris in their forum.

It seems you have too many options you are juggling.

For the case of running a Steam game on linux all i needed was
Fedora KDE and Steam from rpmfusion. Most games have worked.
Given you have AMD GPU then you have all the drives you need installed as standard.

As I understand it @thesullenstallion at first used Steam and Foxhole through flatpak, but this had the stuttering.
All other ideas were tested to mitigate the stuttering.
But yes, another idea is to just run Steam installed via DNF from rpmfusion-nonfree-updates :slight_smile:

@thesullenstallion did you try to turn off the desktop effects?

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People have reported seeing problems with the flatpak steam, others have had succces. Not sure if Nobora has a rpm version of Steam to test.

It seems you have too many options you are juggling.

I know lol I’ve been trying every options out there for 3 days now.

About the steam version, when I checked my package manager I saw that I have both normal steam and rpmfusion steam. I don’t know if I have to delete the normal one or not or which version my steam client is using.

@theprogram Yeah I turned it all off, still nothing. But yesterday I kinda just gave up and play the game. Turns out the heavy stuttering and fps drop only happens in one particular area of the game where it has crowded buildings. When I tried playing in another area the stutter is very minimal and unnoticeable basically. Haven’t tried any other area yet but I will guess it would stutter in places with lots of buildings. It sucks that I just have to bear it when playing in certain area though

I take it you mean Flatpak Steam and PRMFusion Steam. You can probably right click the desktop / taskbar icon to find out where the icon link points to from the desktop. Should not be too difficult to figure out.

Could just be a driver issue that will be patched soon. Keep your system updated and check back in a couple of weeks.

I have not checked what nobara uses as default, but it has been my understanding that they mostly use rpm packages from fedora and rpmfusion and not flatpaks.

They do several changes from the stock fedora including a customized kernel so many support issues are strictly handled by nobara instead of here.

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