1y ago

Steam not launching correctly

So I just replaced my graphics card with an AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT as I was having issues with Nvidia drivers. I replaced the card and then removed the Nvidia drivers with ' sudo apt purge ~nnvidia '. I then restarted the computer.

Everything seems to be working correctly other than Steam will launch but when it tries to actually open a window, it will appear and then instantly disappears and will flash like this several times. The icon in the top bar is still there and I can use it to exit Steam, but I cannot open up any windows with it. If I start Steam from the CLI or start it with integrated graphics, it works correctly.

13 comments

The new look steam got recently looks great but it's absolutely awful performing on my machine... Videos keep playing after I leave the store page, it sucks up memory and processing in the background and recently consumed so many connects to the X server I couldn't launch new programs. I'm gonna reinstall when I get home though and see if that improves things
- I am also experiencing a lot of little weird glitches and bugs with the new UI that I never had before in all the years of the previous one. On the one hand, I love the look and new features. On the other, I just want the basic fucking shit I've already been using for decades to actually work. Most of these are specific to Big Picture mode, which has seen an even more dramatic UI change than the desktop version.

I have also been experiencing this problem (Steam crashes constantly when trying to use my AMD card, but works fine with my integrated GPU).
I believe the issue is this: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/9383
Basically, if you have Steam setup to prefer the external / discrete GPU, it currently will crash (at least with AMD... interestingly it works fine with my NVIDIA eGPU). However, if you launch it with the integrated graphics, then it will work as you pointed out.
So until Valve fixes this, you may need to start Steam with your integrated graphics card, and then add DRI_PRIME=1 to the command options of the games you want to use your external GPU.
- Thank you! I was afraid that it was something I had done, as it had been working with the 3060 Ti that I just removed. I guess I'll just launch it with integrated graphics and use the extra command for the game itself until Valve fixes it.
  
  See my reply to the parent comment
- and then add DRI_PRIME=1 to the command options of the games you want to use your external GPU.
  No you don't need to do this. The games will use the dGPU automatically. Only the steam client uses the iGPU
  
  Hmm... Is that a recent change? That is not true from my experience and most comments online discuss explicitly setting this to take advantage of the dGPU.
  Value itself also mentions using this environment variable: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-runtime/blob/master/doc/steamlinuxruntime-known-issues.md#-multiple-gpu-systems
  Update: So I just tried this with City Skylines. I launched Steam from the dock/panel with the "Integrated Graphics" option and started City Skylines without the DRI_PRIME environment variable. Checking the output of intel_gpu_top it appears that the game was only used my integrated graphics as the Render/3D usage was 100%.
  I then added the DRI_PRIME environment variable to the launch options and restarted City Skylines. With the setting, the FPS counter was higher and the intel_gpu_top output was only around 10%... which probably means it was using my discrete AMD GPU instead of just my integrated Intel one. Also, my fans kicked on, which usually only happens with the dGPU is being used.
  So unfortunately, it does not appear to automatically use the dGPU... at least not on my laptop, with my configuration.

Have you tried fully uninstalling and reinstalling steam?
- Yes I did.

13 comments