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Screen freezes/crashes on Deck
peterlopen 20 Sep, 2022
hello, fellow linux gamers,

I had a steam deck for few months already and lately I noticed lots of crashes in games I play regularly.
To be more specific, mostly during loading of Civ VI and Phoenix Point (PP) - screen will freeze for few seconds (performance overlay will freeze too) then it blinks and there is no progress in loading anymore (content of a screen still visible). if in gaming mode I can close game by steam+long press B button. in desktop mode closing does not work or desktop screen is not restored, so I am left with hard reset option only. Sometimes it happens also during gameplay (Civ VI) but it is 99% of the time during loading and lately it is almost every start of a game. sometime during initial load, sometimes during save loading.
This was happening to me already in the beginning but then it worked fine for like a month (no loading issues, playing for two hours straight). now I can barely start a game so I moved back to desktop PC :(

Any ideas what can be wrong or how to debug that? games are loaded from SD card, but it was happening also when Civ VI was on internal drive. I disabled screen saver as I was thinking that maybe screen is getting switched off (although I could still see game loading screen).

Not sure what else I could try so any hints will be very appreciated.

As a side note I noticed crashes also during longer (half an a hour) play of Super hot (whole deck or just a game) or in longer desktop mode sessions (deck freezing, shutting down).

Thank you.

regards,
peter

Last edited by peterlopen on 20 September 2022 at 6:21 pm UTC
Jayare29 18 Oct, 2022
I have the same issue, what is weird is mine appears to be getting less and less. It used to freeze reliably on any game except Spider-man remastered and fallout 4 now i can play pretty well. So far with retesting the only game that will freeze to the point of not being reliable is GTAV. Horizons, Fallout 4, Witcher 3 and red dead 2 all have been playable without issue. three weeks ago it was so frustrating and a struggle to deal with because there was almost no game to play that didn't kill it. I went to japan for two weeks and took it with me, due to the fact that it wasn't playable i decided to just leave it for the first week because i was busy with work. On the weekend i decided to try and again and it just seemed to start working without issue. i played CP 2077 without issue since and decided to re download all of the other games i had issues with and now the only one that sucks is GTAV so far. Think I will still RMA mine but am tempted to keep it since it mostly works now.

Update: i have just been able to play GTAV for a long duration after capping my FPS/refresh at 40. no freezes through 5 missions and still running. if interested i can list all things i have done so far.

Last edited by Jayare29 on 18 October 2022 at 5:41 pm UTC
peterlopen 19 Oct, 2022
hi,

in my case, based on logs posted here I found this steam report.
After applying first step
  • Reset the steamdeck by doing the volumedown + quick access + turn on

problem has disappeared - tested already for three weeks - CIV VI almost daily, PP two or three times.
I am now running 40 frames, but before applying I have crashes with 40 frames also.
will try without 40 frames cap to be sure but I would not expect to be related as it was happening mostly during loads where frame rate is low.
but honestly I am still not sure if it could be HW issue (as my unit is one from the first batches) and should go for RMA or just be happy and gaming until it lasts :)
Jayare29 20 Oct, 2022
Quoting: peterlopenhi,

in my case, based on logs posted here I found this steam report.
After applying first step
  • Reset the steamdeck by doing the volumedown + quick access + turn on

problem has disappeared - tested already for three weeks - CIV VI almost daily, PP two or three times.
I am now running 40 frames, but before applying I have crashes with 40 frames also.
will try without 40 frames cap to be sure but I would not expect to be related as it was happening mostly during loads where frame rate is low.
but honestly I am still not sure if it could be HW issue (as my unit is one from the first batches) and should go for RMA or just be happy and gaming until it lasts :)
Quoting: peterlopenhi,

in my case, based on logs posted here I found this steam report.
After applying first step
  • Reset the steamdeck by doing the volumedown + quick access + turn on

problem has disappeared - tested already for three weeks - CIV VI almost daily, PP two or three times.
I am now running 40 frames, but before applying I have crashes with 40 frames also.
will try without 40 frames cap to be sure but I would not expect to be related as it was happening mostly during loads where frame rate is low.
but honestly I am still not sure if it could be HW issue (as my unit is one from the first batches) and should go for RMA or just be happy and gaming until it lasts :)

I think i am going to keep mine and start the RMA process again if it starts happening again. One thing i noted today was that it never freezes or has any issue when docked and the screen is off.
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