High CPU usage in bazzite vs stock fedora when gaming in steam game mode
So my CPU usage while gaming in bazzite (steam gamemode) is 100%
I quickly installed fedora onto another disk to test and the same game gives me 50% CPU usage and game performance is a lot better.
I am also noticing some drop inputs on bazzite probably sue to the high CPU usage
Checking with btop apparently it's steam itself that using the most CPU time
Device info: https://paste.centos.org/view/40124f7e
CPU: 7600x
GPU: 7900gre
Im noticing this in several games including
1. a hat in time
2. sonic frontiers
3. Kena
4. Trails through daybreak
28 Replies
strangley this is only in steam game mode playing the games in desktop mode does not have this high cpu usage
try to toggle hardware acceleration for webview in steam and disabling steam overlay and see if that makes a difference
can you evend isable the steam overlay in game mode? i know you can do it in the desktop...
not sure, check launch options?
not familiar with game mode on bazzite though
Can't find either setting in steam guess neither hardware acceleration or the steam overlay can be disabled in game mode
ah i see
Yeah not sure what else to do 60% of the CPU usage comes from steam so something is not right. It's not downloading anything and I tried disableing alow downloads while in game as that has caused issues with performance for me before
When disabled on the desktop they are disabled in game mode
There's no setting in game mode for it though
I tried disabling the steam overlay in desktop mode
It still uses the steam overlay in game mode with the settings disable. No Idea if the hardware acceleration setting are also being forced on in game mode but steam is still using up an absurd amount of CPU around 60-65 percent
This makes everything lag including the steam interface
Actually I think the acceleration setting is taking effect it's way more laggy now
The overlay can't be disabled because it's a fundamental part of game mode
Acceleration does affect game mode, we know that from the Nvidia image
yeah makes sense im uninstalling decky rn to see if it makes a diffrence otherwise Ill try reseting steam irrc thers a ujust for that
It might actually be at least somewhat related decky I removed it and steam CPU usage dropped from about 60% to 30%
That still feels kinda high though but the steam UI and games no longer lag
How much CPU usage should steam be using? I'm still running into some situations especially in kena and sonic frontiers were my 7600x is struggling (which it shouldn't and doesn't when on the desktop)
Resetting steam config with the just also didn't help
I guess there some bad interaction between steam and game scope which is causing the high CPU usage. Decky seems to be un related (got 60% CPU usage steam again)
Probably the only reason it felt like decky helped was because it less process running on the cpu
tiried deleting my whole steam folder to see if it would help, no luck still getting high cpu usage in steam. is this achtually normal? does steam game mode use this much cpu? then how can the steam deck run it? pretty sure a ryzen 7600 is more powerful than a steam deck....
maybe try ?
probably won't change anything but worth a shot
wait nvm you are on game mode
out of ideas
yeah its running steam under a gamescope session thats causing these issues running steam on the desktop works fine
perhaps steam or gamescope was spamming the tty?
you can try updating to 20250325 if you haven't already
but probably won't change anything
yeah im on the latest version of bazzite.
basicly on desktop steam uses about 0.5% cpu and in game mode it uses anywhere from 30% - 60% cpu usage
you can try to run (missed a space, edited now) in desktop mode and check btop to see if it also exhibits the same behavior
it gives me
ahh looks like removing the
-- fixed itah sorry, missed a space
should be this one
steam still doesnt use to much cpu maximum 10 % so it looks like its a problem specficly with the steam gamescope session
well afaik gamescope runs in nested mode when in other compositors
you can try looking around the internet to see if there is a gamescope bug that relates to that
@Kyle Gospo wouldnt this be a bazzite issue though since bazzite is the one who packages a distrbutes the steam game mode session? irrc there is some bazzite specfic stuff added to? should i make an issue on the github with logs?
If there was more than a single person reporting this I might consider calling it that
As of this time I'm unable to reproduce your issue and you are the only one reporting it
We also do not package steam, and our game mode session is one-to-one with Chimera
yeah true i could try opening a bug report on the steam linux github but i thought they might just send me to the bazzite repo
oh i didn't know it was shared with chimera maybe i can ask there to
made a bug report here https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/11855
GitHub
High cpu usage when ran under a gamescope embed session · Issue #1...
Your system information Steam client version (build number or date): 1741737356 Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Bazzite Opted into Steam client beta?: [No] Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes] S...
:mrpgSighFacePalm:
It's the steam background recording feature.
Disabling it lowerw steam CPU usage to under 1%
But it using up to 60% of the CPU ain't good either
ah, yea you can try to turn hardware acceleration & hardware encoding back on and see if steam background recording still eats massive CPU
from the desktop menu
from my experience 720p60 seems to not affect too much performance, even if hardware encoding is off on a 5800X3D, but ymmv
AMD cards also generally doesn't have very good hardware encoders, except maybe the 9070xt(which is really just a rebranded 8800xt)
Yeah I have the acceleration setting on on
It's strange though that it doesn't use the CPU that much on the desktop
Is the steam recording feature only available in game mode?
no, it is also available in desktop mode