Cities: Skylines II – Linux Proton Performance

Linux Proton Performance

Specs

Ryzen 5 5600X, GTX 1660 SUPER, 64 GB RAM, M.2 NVMe drive. Running on EndeavourOS with nvidia 535.113.01. I’m running a modified version of what City Planner’s benchmarks recommended.

Settings are basically 1080p very low + TAA, clouds low, AO low, reflections low, LOD very low but with light count maxed (didn’t make a dent in FPS for me and really improves night time visuals). no Vsync or dynamic resolution of course.

Looks much better than it sounds. So far I’m getting just above 20 in a 40k city. New map is about 40. About on par visually and performance-wise with heavily modded CS1, amusingly enough. No idea where these complaints about the main menu lagging come from. (The menu in game is a different story.)

I also noticed zero impact from high textures, but I figured I’d give my GPU a break anyway because it sounds like it needs one. My CPU also hits insane temps but that’s because I’m too lazy to replace the stock heatsink or even dust the thing, haha. That’s next on my buy list.

Performance Tips

Nvidia users: To check which programs are using VRAM, try nvidia-smi in the command line. It might surprise you sometimes.

I know Steam likes to bloat my VRAM after waking from sleep mode for some reason, so be sure to reset it if it does that. AMD people have a similar command for their cards, maybe radeontop? Not sure.

You’ve probably done this already, but make sure your drivers are updated. I’ve seen night and day changes for newer games after installing an update I’ve been putting off for a long time. I also confer with the OP on Proton Experimental.

Almost always a better experience and not to be overlooked, especially here.