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zamithal @programming.dev

How can I tell if my GPU is being utilized properly?

I purchased a system76 Thelio Mira Elite With a AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT. I kinda regret not going with Nvidia at this point but it is what it is. I primarily use it as a developer workstation, but want to play games on it as well so I can be rid of my windows box.

I didn't expect it to be able to play the latest and greatest games but I did expect it to be able to play older titles reasonably well. Games launch from steam and seem to work, but I'm getting between 0 and 10 fps on the title screen of Kerbal Space Program. Other games are similarly functional but poorly performing.

Where do I start? How can I ensure my GPU is being leveraged? Is this as good as it gets?

65 comments

  • AMD GPUs are usually the best pick for Linux, and the RX 7900 XT is capable of a lot better performance than 0-10 FPS. (It will vary by game, settings, and resolution, of course. You didn't mention the latter two.)

    It's possible your games are using the CPU's integrated GPU instead of your graphics card. (Your iGPU is made for desktop use; it's not suitable for most gaming.) Do any of your underperforming games have a screen that shows which GPU they are using? Is your monitor plugged into the motherboard's video port, or one of the graphics card's ports? Does an overlay appear in the top left of the screen if you put DXVK_HUD=1 %command% in an underperforming game's Steam Launch Options?

    It could also be that you don't have a recent enough kernel, firmware, or mesa/vulkan drivers installed for that fairly new GPU model.

    Since you bought from System76, I would guess that they have support staff who can help make sure these things are set up properly. They even have their own Linux distro, which I think is pretty well regarded. Have you called them?

    Is this as good as it gets?

    No. Not even close.

    EDIT: Added note about DXVK_HUD in Steam Launch Options

  • Almost certainly the game isn't running on the GPU. Use rocm-smi to see which processes are using the discrete GPU. Should be similar to nvidia-smi.

    Also, check the Proton status of your games at ProtonDB.

  • Games launch from steam and seem to work, but I’m getting between 0 and 10 fps on the title screen of Kerbal Space Program.

    Something is definitely off on your system. I've a 7900 XTX (the slightly-higher-end version of that card), and while I don't have the box in front of me, it definitely runs at at least reasonable (60fps+) rates at 2560x1440 on KSP. Might do well above that, dunno. It's definitely not herky-jerky to the level you're seeing, though.

    Are you using Wayland or Xorg?

    If you run radeontop (in Debian trixie, package radeontop) it should tell you various load characteristics. There isn't a GPU-agnostic utility to do this, unless things have changed since last I've looked -- Nvidia and AMD both have their own utilities.

    I kinda regret not going with Nvidia at this point

    Unless you're aiming for AI stuff, where there are some significant benefits, like a large userbase and support for transformers, I'd probably recommend AMD for Linux use.

    EDIT:

    If you run glxinfo on either Xorg (or Wayland, since the emulation layer will handle it), package mesa-utils on Debian trixie, it'll tell you what OpenGL is trying to use. If you're using hardware-accelerated stuff, you'll get something like this:

     
            Vendor: AMD (0x1002)
    Device: AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, gfx1103_r1, LLVM 19.1.4, DRM 3.59, 6.12.11-amd64) (0x1900)

  
     
            OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon Graphics (radeonsi, gfx1103_r1, LLVM 19.1.4, DRM 3.59, 6.12.11-amd64)

    That's been the quick-thumb-in-the-wind test to know whether hardware 3d acceleration is running since just about forever. KSP probably doesn't actually use OpenGL -- I'd guess that it's probably using DirectX going through some emulation layer in Proton to Vulkan -- but if you've got something wonky like no usable 3D driver support for your GPU, that'll show it up.

    EDIT2: There's also vulkaninfo in (package vulkan-tools in Debian trixie). It'll give you something like:

     
            GPU id : 0 (AMD Radeon Graphics (RADV GFX1103_R1)):

    EDIT3: If you're using Xorg and that doesn't show hardware acceleration in use, then the next thing that I'd probably look at is /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see what Xorg is saying regarding your GPU. I don't know much about diagnosing Wayland issues, as I've not been using it for all that long. The kernel log may also have interesting messages information (as root, journalctl -kb or dmesg) if the problem is at the kernel level.

65 comments