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Help with Cyberpunk 2077 on Mint

Hey gang, I'm having trouble running this game. I have a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, RTX 4070 Ti Super, 64GB DDR5 RAM, on a B650 motherboard. My issue is frequent crashing/freezing, meaning I can't play longer than a few minutes at a time. I have tried re-installing the game, Steam, the entire OS, and then fully wiping the drives to remove Windows dual partition and only installing Mint. Then I was pointed to the drivers, so I tried updating using the ppa(?) driver availability as Mint only offered the nVidia 550 through Driver Manager. I tried each of the separate drivers, rebooting between each load, and still having the same issue. For reference, I was able to run through character creator and early intro of the Streetkid after many failed attempts. But then I get to the ride-along with Dexter DeShawn which does not have skippable sections and takes too long. So the length of that conversation is too long before the game either freezes or outright crashes.

Any suggestions are welcome, it's really really annoying me and pretty disheartening after hearing how everything just works on Linux (other than competitive online games, which I don't really play anyway).

Edit to add: I also tried the different Proton versions available through Steam, where I purchased the game.

55 comments

  • My issue is frequent crashing/freezing, meaning I can’t play longer than a few minutes at a time

    Could be overheating.

    I use AMD hardware.

    However, a few years back, I had a particular AMD card that, using its default onboard power profiles, tended to overheat with the default on-card power profiles in games which really exercised the thing; I understand that the vendor that made these cards had issues with insufficient thermal paste or the thermal paste detaching or something. That's the card vendor's fault -- the card shouldn't reach a point where it can get into trouble via overheating, but regardless, it was still a problem. Some people disassembled the thing and put more thermal paste on. I forced the thing to a more-conservative power profile, and that worked.

    I haven't done this with Nvidia hardware, but it sounds like nvidia-smi can do this:

    https://forum.level1techs.com/t/how-to-set-nvidia-gpu-power-limit-nvidia-smi/131467

    Then to query your power limit:

     
            sudo nvidia-smi -q -d POWER

    And to set it

     
            sudo nvidia-smi -pl (base power limit+11)

    Might try restricting the power usage and see if your crashing stops.

    EDIT: Might also try turning down in-game graphical settings. That'd decrease load and maybe also avoid any potential overheating issues, though it'd be a less-reliable option than the above, as you probably don't want to make your system freeze just by running some program that happens to throw a lot of load at your card. That also might avoid any issues that the drivers could have that the game is tickling. Worth a shot, at least from an experimentation standpoint, if you are looking for things to try.

    EDIT2: If those do successfully address your problem and it looks like it's an overheating problem, you might also try figuring out whether you can improve the cooling situation on the hardware side, rather than sacrificing performance for stability.

  • Here's my suggestion.

    First, check your RAM with Memtest86+ or similiar tool. This is the first test because failing memory can and will corrupt your whole system, and it's easy to test.

    Second, if RAM is fine, check the logs. This is more effective then just guessing. Just copy-pasting possible errors to your favorite search engine usually points to the right direction. Archwiki has a nice tutorials about logs.

    Third option is to test components one-by-one. Remove all unnecessary components, such as extra SSDs/HDDs, wifi cards, USB devices and PCIe cards. If it doesn't help, test your CPU and GPU by running dedicated CPU and GPU benchmark tools. If you still get hangs, try with another PSU. If your components test fine, it's likely a driver issue. See Arch wiki article on Nvidia troubleshooting for some tips about that.

    Your last option is pure guessing. It's the most time and money consuming way to debug with the smallest chance of success, but still many people prefer it. Most often issues like these are GPU issues, so it's a good guess. However it's still a guess.

    I hope this helps.

    • I did try checking the logs but nothing seems to show in terminal for Steam. Are separate logs for each game instance kept somewhere or do I need to live monitor in a terminal somehow while the game is playing?

  • The freezes and crashes could be caused by your nvidia card, I had the same issue before switching to amd

    • This whole PC is brand new (built earlier this year), so I don't want to have to replace a component so soon. Especially since it seems to work fine prior to swapping to Mint in general.

  • What kind of an error do you get when the game crashes if you start steam from the terminal?

    • I haven't been starting steam directly from the terminal but will try this when troubleshooting to read the logs!

    • Okay just tried it again to get a better test. To troubleshoot, I'm starting with nothing and will hopefully only change/monitor 1 thing at a time.

      Just booting the PC, opening Steam via Terminal, and playing the game using Proton Experimental selected, it ran for 2m 9s before freezing (my save is right before talking to Padre after leaving the bar for the opening sequence, game freezes during the car ride before I have a chance to save again. I have been able to get past this before, at least enough to make a save on the other side, but this length of time may serve as a good reference for someone.)

      Steam has a popup window that reads "steam_app_1091500 is not responding; You may choose to wait a short while for it to continue or force the app to quit entirely." After about 5 minutes nothing changes, but I can't even access that popup because it is frozen. I have to CTRL+ALT+Tab to Steam to then click "Stop" there. Here is what the Terminal reads from opening until game force closing:

      "[2025-05-01 11:40:55] Nothing to do pid 7527 != 7526, skipping destruction (fork without exec?) Game Recording - game stopped [gameid=1091500] Removing process 7725 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7707 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7688 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7660 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7639 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7583 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7557 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7544 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7534 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7531 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7529 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7526 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7525 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7524 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7520 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7324 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7323 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7322 for gameID 1091500 Removing process 7321 for gameID 1091500 Fossilize INFO: Setting autogroup scheduling.

      (process:8216): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 11:52:01.198: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed reaping pid: 8216 -- gameoverlayui"

55 comments