this post was submitted on 16 Feb 2025
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How can I tell if my GPU is being utilized properly? (self.linux_gaming)
submitted 6 days ago by zamithal to c/[email protected]
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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?

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

.

EDIT: I just noticed your other comment that shows Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS as your Linux distro. That release predates your GPU model by about a year, I think. It seems likely that you just need to get a newer kernel, firmware, and graphics drivers installed. This stuff is available upstream of your distro, so it shouldn’t be too hard for someone who knows Pop!_OS well, like System76. :)

Yeah, that's a good point, but:

  1. It sounds like he bought a system with the GPU in there, and that it came with the distro pre-installed. I'm skeptical that System76 is gonna ship something without the software in place.

  2. It's an LTS release. I think that the way Ubuntu works -- and presumably PopOS, though I've never used it -- is that with LTS releases, they only do a major release every couple of years, but do push out updates for time-sensitive software like video drivers that require updates. If this were, like, the regular Ubuntu release, which has a six month release cycle, then I'd agree.

So I'd guess that the most-likely scenario is that whenever he bought the hardware, there was support in the OS, and they shipped the box with the current LTS release and with the necessary updates. That's just a guess.

Like, when I said "you probably need newer drivers", I was thinking that he was using some really elderly distro and just hadn't ever updated it or something.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I would have expected System76 to ship it with all the necessary updates for the GPU, too, yet we haven't seen any evidence of it, and we are seeing behavior consistent with it not being done. Maybe a human made a mistake somewhere along the line.