[Library Beta] Terrible performance throughout

[YaLTeR]

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): Sep 17 2019
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch
• Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

My desktop is sway, so it's Wayland and Steam is running through XWayland.

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

The whole UI runs at terribly low FPS with huge lag and frame drops all around. Check the video: https://streamable.com/nnyyt

It's worth noting that I've been experiencing the same issue with the new chat ever since it got released, except there it's much worse with frequent freezes.

Steps for reproducing this issue:

1. Launch the Steam client.

[mpnordland]

I also have pretty bad lag and frame drops in the new library beta. Distro: Arch Desktop: Awesome wm on X11

[execut4ble]

Also bad performance here, especially during the transitions when switching games and when hovering over some UI elements, scrolling in the game view.

Distro: Solus Desktop: Budgie on X11 Specs: Intel i5 6600k, NVIDIA GTX 1060

[kisak-valve]

new steam library is slow and unresponsive unless you run steam with native runtimes

Issue transferred from https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/6505. @barfin posted on 2019-09-18T10:58:50:

Your system information

• Steam client version (build number or date): Sep 17 2019
• Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch Linux
• Opted into Steam client beta?: [Yes/No] Yes
• Have you checked for system updates?: [Yes/No] Yes

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

new steam library is slow and unresponsive unless you run steam with native runtimes https://www.archlinux.org/packages/multilib/x86_64/steam-native-runtime/

[Myrddin-Wyllt]

I haven't had an issue besides one memory leak from steamwebhelper. Other than that, my performance has been great. Check to see if you have GPU acceleration enabled in the Steam Interface settings. This has caused issues in the past (& possibly now), disable it if enabled.

Specs

[YaLTeR]

Check to see if you have GPU acceleration enabled in the Steam Interface settings. This has caused issues in the past (& possibly now), disable it if enabled.

I have it disabled.

[tabbeber]

Same thing here, navigating the Steam library feels slow. Pulling the navigation slider makes the library stutter a lot, and releasing the mouse button off the slider makes it buggy.

Steam client version (build number or date): Sep 17 2019 Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Manjaro KDE Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

[Myrddin-Wyllt]

@tabbeber I just found the same issue when the scrollbar is clicked & dragged. Scrolling with a mouse's scrollwheel or the Steam Controller is smooth. I get a slow, stuttering lurch at a few intervals when dragging the scrollbar. Oddly enough, the Friends list, Community, and Store pages function flawlessly.

The issue is due to the Library scrollbar dragging behavior. Currently, only in Steam's Beta Library page, the scrollbar won't continue to drag the moment your cursor leaves the scrollbar trough area. Once the cursor moves back into the trough area, the scrollbar jumps to the new cursor position. In the other pages within Steam (i.e., Community, Store, Friends), the scrollbar will continue to follow the cursor while being dragged regardless of whether your cursor is within the scrollbar trough.

If you're very careful & drag the Library Beta scrollbar while keeping the cursor in the trough, you can see the scrolling works smoothly.

[husjon]

Kernel:     5.3.0-arch1-1-ARCH 
Resolution: 2560x1440, 2560x1440 
WM:         bspwm
CPU:        Intel i7-8700K (12) @ 4.700GHz 
GPU:        NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 
Memory:     8316MiB / 32053MiB
Not using any compositors

Steam System Information

I've got the same issue as mentioned where the entire client feels sluggish, primarily in the Library. If I'm previewing news for any games the steamwebhelper process spins up and chokes the client, resulting in about 2-5 FPS (this is without GPU acceleration). With GPU acceleration, the entire client is barely usable.

[husjon]

After some poking around I found that checking Low Performance Mode under Settings > Library does make previewing news for any game is somewhat better (maybe an increase to about 10-15 FPS from 2-5). For me the blurring effect being used while previewing news articles for a game in the Library seems to be the primary issue (The difference with or without GPU acceleration is negligible).

Previewing screenshots from the community seems to use more of a alpha style background and does not have the same negative effect.

I would say there where some minor improvements with the latest update from Steam (Built: Sep 30 2019, at 21:41:49, Steam package: 1569883362)

[SpookySkeletons]

Also affected by this issue. Performance is really terrible on the new library.

Friend reports he is unaffected on his Nvidia GPU. Both my Intel HD and AMD FirePro lag heavy on it.

[Xinayder]

I have had terrible performance with the new library UI since its release, although most of it was fixed by enabling low performance mode, which made things smoother overall. However, whenever I open a news article for a game, there's a small delay between rolling the mouse scroll and the library scrolling, which results in something that looks like the new UI is laggy.

Here's the link for the video: https://streamable.com/7lot1

You can notice that there's a small delay between rolling the wheel (as seen on keymon) and the library actually scrolling the news article. I compared it to the "home" section of the new library UI and you can see the difference.

Using Steam built on Oct 7 2019, at 22:46:25, Steam API v020, Steam package versions 1570492308

[lostiniceland]

Not sure if this is related to the new Library, but Steam keeps my Laptop at 62 degrees celcius and constantly using my CPU with 5% on all cores. Shutting down steam, the machine cools down to 47 degrees.

WTF

[Xinayder]

After the latest update (Steam built on Oct 15 2019, at 18:19:51, Steam API v020, Steam package versions 1571182697), the scroll issue is now gone and scrolling looks normal.

[YaLTeR]

I'm on 1571182697 and I can confirm the library is running much smoother now. It's still laggy but at least not unusable.

[svin24]

So steam relies on chromium to render the library and sadly chromium has hardware acceleration turned off on linux by default meaning steam will rely on your CPU to render the library which is slow.

I think just turning it on or adding an option to the settings menu would be enough to fix this issue.

Sadly i do not know what flag is responsible for this.

[svin24]

Hello again i think the chrome flag is #ignore-gpu-blacklist. Though sadly i have no idea how to enable it on steam

[Seneral]

Ok opened steam after a long while and having the same issue, but much worse than in the screen cap above. It is around 2-5fps, resizing freezes the current view (no clicks work, but I can switch to other tabs e.g. to community). Not to mention the UI looks bad. Disabled GPU Rendering and now it's on the level as the screencap and actually browsable and does not hang anymore, but still with severe lag (around 200-400ms). An option to revert to the old UI would be appreciated.

[siyia2]

Hello i ve found that setting bandwidth and graphics mode to low in library and disabling smooth scrolling in interface options improves the gui responsiveness under sway/wayland.

[JaneSmith]

Absolutely terribad performance on my end. Running on a very high end system, on Fedora Silverblue with GNOME/Wayland. The entire Steam UI freezes up for a few seconds every few seconds. The entire thing is horribly sluggish to the point it's almost unusable.

[Xinayder]

Aside from the terrible library performance (even with low bandwidth and performance modes enabled), I also have terrible performance throughout the whole Steam client. Scrolling is laggy, the whole browser behind the Steam client acts as if it's running at 5-10 FPS. For comparison, it's much better to navigate through Steam's websites via a standard web browser than with the Steam client.

[ParadoxSpiral]

I have found that for my setup the horrible FPS is caused by smooth scrolling and occurs when multiple steam windows are open (e.g. library and friends) with sway in tabbed mode.

FPS increases significantly by putting the windows next to each without tabs.

[Faalagorn]

Absolutely terribad performance on my end. Running on a very high end system, on Fedora Silverblue with GNOME/Wayland. The entire Steam UI freezes up for a few seconds every few seconds. The entire thing is horribly sluggish to the point it's almost unusable.

Same here, running Sway on Wayland. Setting bandwidth and graphics to low and disabling smooth scrolling as suggested by @siyia2 seems to not help much if at all. Sway not having support for menu on tray icon doesn't help either.

Anyone found any way to mitigate it? I remember having similar issues with chromium, but I switched to chromium-ozone from AUR and the performance is fine. Is there a way to replace chromium-cef used with Steam with a custom version? Would it even help?

I only use Steam client to launch games nowadays, doing what I can from browser, but even that is troublesome with this.

[siyia2]

@Faalagorn Try running steam with split layout instead of tabbed in sway, it really helps with performance, but issue is still present.

[Faalagorn]

@Faalagorn Try running steam with split layout instead of tabbed in sway, it really helps with performance, but issue is still present.

Thanks! I'm already using split layout, so sadly no gain here :) I tried disabling GPU acceleration but it seems it's even worse then.

I hope it will be slowly solved when CEF moves to ozone, maybe then native Wayland could be enabled somehow? Also #4924

[makarov-roman]

@ParadoxSpiral The behaviour is the same for me. I have no laggs at all if only one steam window is open.

[7RST1]

I'm still having this issue 1,5 years later. It is unusable when having two or more Steam windows open, averaging around 0.3 FPS. MAJOR issue for the number of Wayland users, which is growing by the day.

[Faalagorn]

I think the problem is worse the more games you have as well, might not be directly related to XWayland client, but I get a feeling it's worse without it.

[YaLTeR]

If you're running Steam as an Xwayland client and experiencing 1 FPS make sure all Steam windows are visible (none are covered or on another workspace). There's a quirk due to how Steam is implemented with frame callback throttling that makes it go 1 FPS if any of its windows are invisible.

[Faalagorn]

If you're running Steam as an Xwayland client and experiencing 1 FPS make sure all Steam windows are visible (none are covered or on another workspace). There's a quirk due to how Steam is implemented with frame callback throttling that makes it go 1 FPS if any of its windows are invisible.

That turned to be a main cause for my stuttering woes, thanks!

P.S. Another reason for Steam to go native Wayland I guess, until then I'll be closing the chat instead of leaving it in background.

[ShapeShifter499]

If you're running Steam as an Xwayland client and experiencing 1 FPS make sure all Steam windows are visible (none are covered or on another workspace). There's a quirk due to how Steam is implemented with frame callback throttling that makes it go 1 FPS if any of its windows are invisible.

Thank you, I noticed this ever since I reinstalled my system and went Gnome + Wayland on Arch Linux for my desktop environment. It was puzzling me since I had Firefox right besides Steam and it ran perfect when Steam appeared to struggle. Having all windows up fixed this as mentioned. It's weird this is such an issue and needs a fix ASAP.

[kaincenteno]

If you're running Steam as an Xwayland client and experiencing 1 FPS make sure all Steam windows are visible (none are covered or on another workspace). There's a quirk due to how Steam is implemented with frame callback throttling that makes it go 1 FPS if any of its windows are invisible.

wow thank you that helped out a lot, was always wondering why sometimes steam would be so horribly slow and sometimes it would be awesome

[vieruuuu]

idk if this help but switching steam play from proton experimental to proton ge solves my problem with the performance of the library

arch linux, wayland, proton 6.18 ge 2

[romatthe]

I have still have this issue on multiple machines. On my main workstation running NixOS with the latest stable Linux kernel, GNOME, Wayland and a modern AMD GPU with the latest AMDGPU drivers running at 3440x1440, I get absolutely abysmal frames in the Library screen, and pretty awful frames in other parts of the client as well.

On my personal laptop (running the exact same setup) with just an integrated AMD GPU at 1920x1080, I get about the same result. Even with the suggestions listed in this entire thread, it is 100% unusable. I can run games just fine by launching them externally via Lutris, but obviously this is not an ideal situation.

I have another laptop with an NVIDIA GPU, but I'm not running Wayland there, since that can still be a bit of headache to say the least.

I should point out that I have an absolutely colossal Steam library though, that might be affecting the overall awful performance in the Library though.

[siyia2]

Problem persists when running steam via Xwayland

[dron1885]

Sway, 5700x Mesa driver, 1440p 144Hz

Found interesting behavior (I assume XWayland related):

glxgears by itself : 143.9 fps starting steam: 35.4 FPS, steam is laggy as hell vblank_mode=0 steam: 143.9 idling, ~ 110 doing something. Steam feels responsive

(vblank_mode=0 glxgears will show 14500 fps, with vblank_mode=0 steam about 4000)

So it seems like weird XWayland vsync behavior.

EDIT: Steam feels responsive when taking half a screen, going more than 2/3 - lags start to appear again. I think we really need an option to force hardware acceleration in underlying chromium.

[zany130]

also getting really bad performance as I mentioned in the above closed duplicate issue. however, most people here seem to be having issues when using xwayland I am using x.org

@kisak-valve

Disabling big picture and using the normal steam desktop interface fixed the issue for me. So it seems there are performance issues in big picture

[oliviergareau]

This beta release of the Steam client just came in today and I had the chance to test it (Arch Linux, GNOME Wayland).

Overall, this update seems to make the UI more usable than before when the Friends & Chat window is hidden. However, the problem is still noticeable: the UI is much faster when the Friends & Chat windows is visible.

[7RST1]

I can't say the same on my system (Manjaro (unstable), Gnome on Wayland). Still 0.5 fps across the application when the friends window is open.

[JaneSmith]

It would be great if this could be fixed. I chat with people every day using Steam Chat, and it's quite frustrating how the UI keeps having these short freezes all the time.

[SylvainBoilard]

After today's update to the Steam client I can still observe a relatively high CPU usage when the Steam library and contact list are opened in an invisible workspace.

Closing these windows does suppress the CPU usage, opening an opportunity for the CPU to slow down for power-saving.

This issue also used to prevent games from running at a decent framerate until I hacked something together to lower the priority of the steamwebhelper processes; but obviously now those processes become unresponsive when the computer is on high load so this isn't an ideal workaround.

Kernel:     Debian 5.18.5-1 (2022-06-16) x86_64
Resolution: 1920x1080
WM:         i3wm
CPU:        Intel Core i5-4440 CPU @ 3.10GHz
GPU:        NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 
Memory:     8192 MiB
Not using any compositors

[ghost]

I use Arch Linux with i3, a Ryzen 2600 CPU, 32 GiB RAM, an R9 280X GPU and a 4K monitor. The performance is as smooth as it can get on Windows, whereas on Linux it is very bad, with both bundled and native libraries and with GPU acceleration turned either on or off. GPU acceleration does nothing but make the GPU go hot.

We know that Chromium runs like crap on Linux (although in the Chromium browser I have on my machine Steam runs very well), but a comment from someone at Valve would make sense after all these years, so that people could stop wasting their time doing irrelevant experiments and posting here.

[emmecii]

Got redirect here by Kisak, i suspected the problem was Wayland, but the issue has 3 years and X11 is a very outdated solution and every distro now use Wayland as default server and relegate x11 as legacy. Expecially when SteamOS 3 use Wayland even if with gamescope only in in gaming mode.

[Munoida]

Got redirect here by Kisak, i suspected the problem was Wayland, but the issue has 3 years and X11 is a very outdated solution and every distro now use Wayland as default server and relegate x11 as legacy. Expecially when SteamOS 3 use Wayland even if with gamescope only in in gaming mode.

Little correction: Most distros use Wayland unless if you are using an NVIDIA Card, mainly due to how NVIDIA is handling things with Wayland.

But yes, the lag should not be here especially with how likely it is for X11 to be replaced by Wayland in the future.