AMD Linux Patch Dramatically Reduces Game Stutters On Steam Deck
The open source community always seems to be hard at work on AMD CPU and GPU drivers on Linux, and this translates to huge gains for AMD and SteamOS-based devices like the Steam Deck. The latest big improvement we've seen is an update to the AMD P-State on Linux, which corresponds to the various power states of an AMD CPU (or in this case, SoC.)
As the mastermind behind the patch, Meta employee David Vernet, puts it, "A game's main or render thread typically blocks briefly on a futex or GPU fence every frame, and the resulting frequency droop shows up directly as stale frames and inflated frame-time percentiles. [...] This series instead adds in an opt-in, per-core EPP boost."
So, Vernet found a relatively niche problem within AMD's Linux drivers, and found a fix that improves performance without triggering regressions in low-power SoC devices like the Steam Deck. The...
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