Framerate or refresh limiting via Gamescope causes poor performance

Bazzite
1

I’ve noticed inconsistent frame times and frame spikes in several games I’ve been playing. I tried to limit the framerate via scopebuddy but doing so actually made the issue more acute.

Using the Scopebuddy GUI I iterated through a couple different settings. It happens on any game, but I used Doom Eternal’s visual performance metrics to see what was going on with my hardware.

If I set a refresh rate and/or specify a framerate limit, my CPU and GPU start using more resources than if I left it unlocked or using VRR. Using VRR does not cap the framerate so I am basically not even using it, and I know I have lots of performance headroom because games will max out their FPS as high as they can.

I disabled scopebuddy and tried opening Doom Eternal and the same behavior happens when I turn v-sync on. Turning v-sync off relaxes the GPU and CPU again. This happens on my ViewSonic XG3220 (4K60) monitor regardless of the cable or video port I use.

‘PROTON_LOG=1’ hasn’t sent anything to my home folder, but I did start Steam and Eternal up via the console. PasteBin

One thought I had was the GPU and CPU aren’t able to synchronize for some reason. According to this Reddit post, RDNA2 doesn’t like to bottlenecked. It is running with an old CPU on a PCI-E 3 board, but if that was the case wouldn’t less demanding games work better?

Any guidance, thoughts, or troubleshooting avenues would be appreciated.

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