Roll20 Maxing Out AMD Radeon RX 7700S GPU on Linux

Hey,

I’m experiencing an unusual performance issue with Roll20 on my Fedora Linux system. The AMD Radeon RX 7700S is being 100% utilized when running Roll20 in Chrome, which seems excessive. On Windows, I didn’t encounter this problem and could even run the application primarily through the CPU.

System Details:

  • OS: Fedora Linux 41 (Silverblue)
  • Kernel: Linux 6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64
  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS @ 5.14 GHz
  • GPUs:
    • AMD Radeon RX 7700S (Discrete)
    • AMD Radeon 780M (Integrated)
  • Display:
    • LS49C95xU: 5120x1440 @ 60 Hz in 49"
    • BOE0BC9: 2560x1600 @ 165 Hz (as 2048x1280) in 16"
  • BIOS: 03.05

Questions/Seeking Advice:

  1. Has anyone else experienced similar GPU load with Roll20 on Linux?
  2. Are there any Chrome or GPU settings I can adjust to reduce GPU utilization?
  3. Potential workarounds to offload more processing to the CPU?

Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

As I understand it – and take this with a grain of salt, I’ve only heard it from a long-time Linux-using friend, I have no knowledge of it myself – Chrome isn’t set up to use hardware acceleration under Linux, only under Windows. Firefox is set up to use hardware acceleration for Linux, but isn’t for Windows.

The last time I used the Roll20 site, maybe a couple years ago, it had stopped working with Firefox, so you might be stuck with that. :frowning: There may be some way to reduce the usage via software.

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True, Firefox seems to need a lot less performance. Unfortunately it doesn’t currently support WebApps :frowning:

But even with games, no matter how few system requirements they have, the load is always 100%; so I thought it might be a driver issue or something.

So I have now tried geekbench under fedora and have to realize that the CPU score has already dropped extremely; on arch it was much higher

Disable GPU acceleration, and you will be good.

This is very discussed into Chromium-based browsers, seems like they like to use “both GPU” by some reason.

If I switch this off, I can no longer use roll20 at all because it sounds as if I have 0,1 fps.

Can you try this?

So you are forcing Chrome to use certain GPU instead of “do whatever you find”

I always start chrome with the button “Launch using Discrete Graphics Card” when the graphics card is displayed, but this is a different bug. it also uses the correct graphics card, at least as far as I can see in the resources.

Just tried using Brave, it works fine to me, as you can see, my dGPU is off.

What do you see at Chrome GPU flags? (chrome://gpu)

I can’t test the dGPU right now, I’ll have to see if I can find an older kernel for Fedora 42 Silverblue to get it working again.

With Brafe I get the following message:

and this is the load while I am in the browser:

Apart from the fact that the fan is so loud that I certainly can’t play a round because I can’t hear anyone or they can’t hear me.

Seems like it’s not using GPU in your case, forcing CPU for everything.

Try enabling those flags (brave://flags), 1st will force GPU acceleration at unsupported systems. 2nd will use Vulkan

By the way, if you wanna get rid of loud fans, I do the following at terminal:

sudo cpupower frequency-set -u 3.80GHz -g performance

This will force CPU to never use “Turbo” mode, keeping temps below 85C

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Yes, because of this problem: Graphics card not available

If I activate Override software rendering list Roll20 only displays a white page instead of the virtual table.

If I activate Vulcan:

Back to the kernel Linux 6.13.5-200.fc41.x86_64 and the above mentioned Brave settings + Launch using Discrete Graphics Card is my load:

Hmmm, that’s very strange.

If worth something, I had many problems between 6.11.+ and 6.13.+. I been forced to stay at 6.10.+ for a while, then jump to 6.14.0 (don’t go to 6.14.2 as they re-introduced back some problems)

I have also experienced roll20 in chromium using a lot of resources (under Bazzite). 97% of the iGPU , and very little of the dGPU. The cpu also runs between 76-80 degrees C at 28%, which is interesting. The fans go pretty hard too. Trying Brave didn’t change anything.

I will say that its hella responsive when its running. The 3d dice roll real smooth. But it would be nice if there was a middle ground or if the dGPU took a bit of the slack off the iGPU.

Have you ever tried to start the browser with the dGPU?

So i’ve tried using the DRI_PRIME environment variable and it did not reduce the fans at all. However, I switched my power profile to ‘power-saver’, and the reduced wattage seems to keep the thermals to about 60-70c which is reasonable and fairly quiet (it also cuts out the dGPU and relies wholly on the iGPU). The screens color fidelity takes a little hit, bit its quite playable.

I have been considering undervolting the dGPU to see if I can finesse better thermals out of it being in the ‘balanced’ power-setting (and maybe to not drain the battery) but I have almost no experience doing that kind of thing.

Really, for me, it’s not working if I don’t have at least a balanced setting.