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Recently we highlighted another upgrade of Proton Experimental, the special testing area of Steam Play Proton that pulls in new and advanced features - well it needs a lot more testing. If you're not clear on what Proton and Steam Play are, be sure to check out our constantly updated dedicated page.

Long-time Valve developer who has been focused on the Linux side, Pierre-Loup Griffais, sent further word on Twitter about the changes that have been made:

Latest Proton Experimental contains input latency improvements, especially for VSynced games, or GPU-bound games running below 60FPS. The changes affect how the frames are timed at a pretty low level, so it'll need lots of testing to make sure there aren't subtle regressions.

Need to know how to actually use Proton Experimental? Here's a simple HOWTO (as it's not complicated!). Make sure it's installed by searching for it in your Steam Library, then select it from the Compatibility menu in the Properties section of a game. See our quick video below:

For an explainer in text form:

  1. Search for Proton Experimental and install if not already.
  2. Right click any game on Steam and go to Properties.
  3. Select the Compatibility menu on the right side.
  4. Ensure the "Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool" is ticked.
  5. From the dropdown box that appears select Proton Experimental.
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8 comments

Ehvis Jun 7, 2021
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Would this do anything for VR?
scaine Jun 7, 2021
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Has there been any indication as to what we should look out for? It seems a bit vague on detail!
fagnerln Jun 7, 2021
Quoting: scaineHas there been any indication as to what we should look out for? It seems a bit vague on detail!

Yeah, sound generic but I get.

The improvements will be noticeable only by people who suffered the input lag. I think that he want to people playing random games (even without lag) to see if there something broken.
GeoGalvanic Jun 7, 2021
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Quoting: scaineHas there been any indication as to what we should look out for? It seems a bit vague on detail!

I have the same question.

From the tweet I'm not sure if he means internal or external testing is needed.

If it's external testing they don't seem to have a link for providing feedback...

This is the sort of thing that is hard to measure objectively, it would likely need specialized monitoring tools to evaluate correctly, but maybe that's something that valve have already implemented with crash reports that are sent to Valve in proton?
STiAT Jun 7, 2021
On this PC which has little in terms of graphics (RX460), I can get input lag pretty reliably using higher settings than the GPU can handle:
  • Metro Exodus

  • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance (without tweaking graphics settings properly, their defaults are horrible)


On my newer PC (GTX3060TI) I didn't experience this kind of input lag yet.

I'll probably do some testing on this old one and see if I see improvements between 6.3 and experimental and/or hickups/regressions.


Last edited by STiAT on 7 June 2021 at 2:37 pm UTC
scaine Jun 7, 2021
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I've never experienced input lag in games apart from that one weird Proton release that introduced it after about 20 minutes of gameplay. I just used Proton-GE builds until they fixed that.

I wonder if this is specific to gamepads, which I rarely use? Yeah, it's all a bit vague. Not sure how to help... and I don't have a github account anymore anyway, so I'm probably not much use even if I knew what to look out for!
axredneck Jun 7, 2021
Quoting: GeoGalvanicIf it's external testing they don't seem to have a link for providing feedback...
https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues
oldominion Jun 8, 2021
Sorry for this stupid question but I watched the video of this Thread and how to setup Proton Experimental, so I use Experimental in the global settings already, do I have to set it for a specific game too then?
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