How to play Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux/Ubuntu 20.04 using AMD GPU

Introduction

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Copyrights Cyberpunk 2077© is a registered trademark of CD PROJEKT Capital Group© STEAM© is a registered trademark of Valve Corporation© Copyleft illustration: cyberpunk-city-girl-window-view-5837064

Disclaimer

This article is only relevant for ** AMD GPU **.

Purpose

Learn a simple example of running a modern Windows game on Linux. For that, we use Proton. Proton was developed by Valve. Proton is a compatibility layer for Microsoft Windows games running on Linux. This example uses Cyberpunk 2077 as an example. I bought it on Steam.

About hardware

The minimum requirements are listed here (https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/cyberpunk/pc/sp-technical/issue/1556/cyberpunk-2077-system-requirements).

New hardware!

After installing a new GPU (Radeon RX 5500 XT), I got a black screen at startup. After some research, we found that the motherboard needs to get a firmware update.

Flashing the motherboard with the new firmware is a dangerous procedure. Please proceed carefully.

After flashing the motherboard, I installed a new GPU and everything worked fine.

XORG or Wayland

When you log in to ** Ubuntu **, you can select the display server (bottom right of the screen). I am currently using the default display server ** XORG **. In the future, we may switch to ** Wayland ** when ** HDR ** is supported.

According to this study, the current difference between the two servers is very small.

Step 1: Video driver

The latest AMD GPUs on Linux have two drivers.

Unique driver: AMD GPU-PRO Open source driver: AMD GPU

To use Proton, you must use ** AMD GPU **.

Shows the current video driver.

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'

Line to see:

...
Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
...

Step 2: Mesa

Mesa is an open source software implementation of OpenGL, Vulkan, and other graphic API specifications.

For ** CyberPunk 2077 ** ©, the minimum version required is ** v21 **.

To install the latest version, do the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

If you want to check the installed version, you need to use mesa-utils.

sudo apt-get install mesa-utils

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL version"

Step 3: CPU governor and GPU power management

On Linux, the governor determines the CPU frequency. By default, the governor uses on-demand mode. On-demand mode is not suitable for games.

This utility also disables the GPU's power saving mode.

I am using the game mode utility to easily optimize the CPU and GPU settings.

Gamemode dependencies

sudo apt install meson libsystemd-dev pkg-config ninja-build git libdbus-1-dev libinih-dev

sudo apt install dbus-user-session

sudo apt install build-essential

sudo apt-get install manpages-dev

Installation

git clone https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode.git
cd gamemode
git checkout 1.6 
./bootstrap.sh

Please see Official Homepage for details.

Step 4: Steam

Install Steam

sudo add-apt-repository multiverse
sudo apt update
sudo apt install steam
steam

For clarity, I'm using ** Steam ** in ** Big Picture Mode **.

Enable Steam Play and Proton Experimental

Custom launcher options

To enable the game mode, I use the following options.

gamemoderun %command%

If you want to skip the launcher page, you can use:

gamemoderun %command% --launcher-skip

I'm using a ** Xbox One ** wired controller. The settings are as follows:

sample

In the following configuration, the game runs at 1080p at 60 fps and the graphical options are set between LOW and Medium.

CPU : AMD RYZEN 5 2400g (2018) GPU : AMD Radeon 5500 XT 4GB (2019) RAM : 16 GB

I have attached a screenshot.

Other games

See the Proton Database (https://www.protondb.com/) for a complete list of supported games.

Information source

https://github.com/FeralInteractive/gamemode https://www.protondb.com/app/1091500