Suddenly having funny issues with framerates: Vulkan, Mesa or something else?

Hey friends,

I know that this is a difficult issue to have people try and solve due to how many factors there can be, but this is an odd one for me. To start, here’s some info

<span style="color:#323232;">=== Hardware ===
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-12600K
</span><span style="color:#323232;">GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (navi22, LLVM 16.0.6, DRM 3.52, 6.4.8-gentoo-dist-hardened)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Memory: DDR5 5200
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Monitor  Refresh Rate: 165.00 Hz
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">=== Software ===
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Distro: Gentoo
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Kernel Version: 6.4.8-gentoo-dist-hardened
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Mesa Version: 23.1.5
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Vulkan Version: 1.3.250
</span><span style="color:#323232;">GCC Version: 13.2.0
</span><span style="color:#323232;">xf86-video-amdgpu Version: Up-to-date with the master branch
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Display server: X.Org
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  xorg-server version: 21.1.8
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  xorg-proto version: 2023.2
</span><span style="color:#323232;">  
</span><span style="color:#323232;">=== Proton Info ===
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Have tried GE-Proton versions 7.53 to 8.11
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">--- Games and their commonly used Steam Launch Options ---
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Enderal: Forgotten Stories (Special Edition), Steam App ID 976620
</span><span style="color:#323232;"> 
</span><span style="color:#323232;">PROTON_LOG=1 PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 DXVK_ASYNC=1 WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1 WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR_STRENGTH=1 WINEDLLOVERRIDES="xaudio2_7=n,b" PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC=90 =1  LD_PRELOAD="$LD_PRELOAD:/usr/$LIB/libgamemode.so.0.0.0" gamemoderun %command%
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">I've also tried without DXVK_ASYNC and adding PROTON_USE_WINED3D=1
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">Deep Rock Galatic, Steam App ID 548430
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">No extra launch options. Runs on Linux, but still the weird framerate issues
</span>

This issue with low framerates only started happening recently. The earliest I recall seeing these issues was sometime 2 weeks ago. I thought it was something related to the version of GE-Proton I was using. Last time I had a problem was with using the stable version of Mesa but that was several months ago, about 9-10 months.

When I run glxgears I get around 165-170 fps, so I don’t think the physical GPU is the issue. Lower-end graphical games run perfectly fine. Nothing else has been running any slower, and I don’t think I’ve made any notable changes to my system that would cause this. Running btop when nothing is running doesn’t show any processes that’s taking resources it shouldn’t. Neither the GPU nor CPU make more noticeable noise or anything, nor does the CPU run hotter when I first got it and started playing games.

Without doing getting really into the weeds, my best guest is something with versions of Mesa or Vulkan. But I wouldn’t exactly know. I’m just basing that on the one issue that I had with an older version of Mesa those 9-10 months ago, so I could be completely wrong. I could try with the git versions of each package. I’ll see if I can install those and see if anything is better and report back.