Steam Deck 1% low FPS boosted with AMD Ryzen Linux patch

Proposed Linux update boosts Steam Deck 1% FPS lows by 31.8%

A new Linux update has been proposed that could dramatically improve the gaming performance of AMD Ryzen-based systems under Linux (including Valve’s Steam Deck). The tweak implements per-core Energy Performance Preference (EPP) boosting for recently busy CPUs. This results in greatly improved 1% low framerates, especially on Valve’s Steam Deck.

In basic terms, this tweak tells recently busy CPUs to run in performance mode instead of waiting for the system to raise its clock speeds again. This prevents issues where busy threads see short clock speed drops, resulting in momentary lag when loads are re-applied. This update enables more consistent performance, resulting in more stable framerates and fewer FPS drops.

In Civilization VI’s benchmark, 1% low framerates improved by 31.8%. This dramatically improved the game’s framerate stability. This is likely to be a more extreme example of this update’s benefits. After all, Civilization 6 is a CPU-heavy game with a highly variable workload. As such, this game will likely benefit more from this update than most other titles.

In active (EPP) mode the platform autonomously picks the operating point between min_perf and max_perf, biased by the EPP hint, and the kernel only rewrites the CPPC request on policy or limit changes. A workload dominated by one mostly-busy thread that takes frequent short sleeps (common in gaming workloads, for example) can fare poorly under this strategy. Each sleep decays the hardware’s performance signal, causing post-wakeup bursts to start at a low operating point and inflating tail latency even though the CPU is essentially fully busy while work is available.

As mentioned above, the motivating case here is gaming. A game’s main or render thread typically blocks briefly on a futex or a GPU fence every frame, and the resulting frequency droop shows up directly as stale frames and inflated frame-time percentiles.

– David Vernet – Linux Kernel Hacker

This hack won’t just improve Valve’s Steam Deck

This patch improves AMD’s P-state driver and should help boost the performance of all AMD Ryzen-powered Linux gaming machines. However, it will take time for this update to be reviewed by AMD’s Linux Kernel engineers and implemented into official updates. With the promise of Linux-wide gaming improvements for Ryzen, it is hoped that this change will be implemented in the near-term future. If not, AMD will simply be leaving performance on the table.

You can join the discussion on Linux’s proposed “epp_boost” feature on the OC3D Forums.