Bug Report: Random rendering freezes in Proton games on RTX 50-series cards (recovers after Alt+Tab/window refocus)

Graphics / Linux Linux
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1

Hello,

I’ve been experiencing a rendering issue in multiple Proton games on Linux where the game will randomly freeze visually during gameplay. I believe this is a regression with the RTX 50-series linux drivers, as this issue is only present on these cards.

System Information

  • Distribution: CachyOS (fully up to date)
  • Desktop Environment: KDE Plasma (KWin)
  • Session: Wayland
  • Kernel: 7.1.2-2-cachyos
  • GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800x3D
  • Driver: 610.43.02 (Open Kernel Modules)
  • OpenGL: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 610.43.02
  • Vulkan Instance: 1.4.350
  • Vulkan Driver: 610.43.02

Symptoms

At seemingly random points while playing:

  • The game display freezes completely.
  • Audio that is already playing continues (e.g. background music), but no new audio appears to play after the freeze (e.g sound effects, voice lines).
  • GPU utilization drops to 0% while the game is frozen.
  • The rest of the desktop remains fully responsive.
  • Alt+Tabbing away from the game and then back (or refocusing with the meta key) immediately restores rendering, and the game continues from the state it would’ve been in (i.e. implying the game is still running and progressing, but just not rendering)

Because the game resumes immediately after refocusing the window, it appears the game itself continues running while presentation/rendering stops.

I have not found a reliable way to reproduce the issue. It appears to happen randomly, although I suspect GPU load spikes may increase the likelihood, possibly shader compilation contributes, as it tends to happen early into my playtime, except FFXIV, which happens constantly, possibly due to its large scope. This does not affect all games, many games I have gone 20+ hours with no issues

Affected games

So far I’ve observed this in:

Final Fantasy XIV (DX11) ← Constantly happens, on average every hour or so.
Warframe (DX11) ← Only happened once 30 minutes after I started for the first time
Satisfactory (DX11) ← Happened roughly 3 times across 3 hours, hasn’t happened 10 hours later

Proton versions tested

  • Proton 11
  • Proton Experimental
  • Proton GE 10-34
  • proton-cachyos-11.0-20260601

Troubleshooting

I’ve tried:

  • Running the games through Gamescope.
  • Multiple Proton versions (listed above).
  • Booting the LTS kernel.
  • Running with the latest updates.
  • Using Wayland mode on supported proton versions

None of these changed the behavior.

Additional observations

  • No relevant messages appear in dmesg or the system journal when the freeze occurs.
  • I’ve spoken with several other Linux users who have reported similar symptoms, and all of them were using RTX 50-series GPUs.

If there are any additional logs, debug options, or tests that would help narrow this down, I’d be happy to collect them. If anyone else has seen this issue too, please share, maybe we can figure out what’s up. Thanks!

2

Oh wow, I was just thinking about making a nearly identical post yesterday, but didn’t when I found this github post. The title lists the 5090 but I’m reasonably certain it’s all 5000 series cards. Was hoping maybe I’d find more information today when I found your post, but I’m starting to think I will not have answers anytime soon.

I can say that I have tried most of the same stuff as you, all symptoms being identical. Games I’ve experienced freezing in are Warframe (DX12) and Orcs Must Die: Deathtrap; and mostly using Proton 11; Proton GE 11-1; Proton 10; and Proton GE 10-34. Weirdly it doesn’t freeze at all in Monster Hunter Wilds. I’ve even tried starting steam in a gamescope session and then launching the games that way instead of using a DE, but the games still freeze.

My wife and I run RTX 5070’s and both have these issues. She has an AMD Processor on CachyOS with KDE; I’ve got an older Intel Processor on Arch with Gnome and it makes no difference.