Memory Cache Constatnly filling up.

[duality1130]

Describe the bug

I run htop every now and again and notice an influx of memory being cached (+24GB). I have 64GB of RAM built into this computer. The workaround I have is to run this command: "free && sync && echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches && free" to release the cached memory. I can't install crontab as far as I know to have it run hourly, but I do not know the root cause of this issue. It happens when I play Age of Empires 4 on Steam Proton 9.0.4. After some time, this incredibly hurts performance and lags the game to 2-5FPS. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you!

What did you expect to happen?

I'm not sure how to fix this issue at this time.

Output of rpm-ostree status

State: idle
Deployments:
● ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-gnome:stable
                   Digest: sha256:49dc317a9ea953a0283e9e9b9afe5c1ae0a483ddd976b4ed5390cc09a73307e8
                  Version: 41.20250216.2 (2025-02-17T16:35:10Z)
          LayeredPackages: cmake coolercontrol git htop libXScrnSaver-devel liquidctl
                           openrazer-daemon openrazer-meta razergenie

  ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bazzite-gnome:stable
                   Digest: sha256:49dc317a9ea953a0283e9e9b9afe5c1ae0a483ddd976b4ed5390cc09a73307e8
                  Version: 41.20250216.2 (2025-02-17T16:35:10Z)
          LayeredPackages: cmake coolercontrol git htop libXScrnSaver-devel liquidctl
                           openrazer-daemon openrazer-meta razergenie

Hardware

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X 12 Core
RAM: 64GB DIMM4 (3200MT/s)
GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT
SSDs: 2 - 2TB Samsung 990 SSDs
Motherboard: B550
-- Uses Intel PCIe AX210 WiFi chip.

Extra information or context

No response

[atimeofday]

Does this only occur during (or after) playing Age of Empires 4?

[duality1130]

I've noticed it also fills up with other games, like Enshrouded, but I only notice performance issues with AoE4.

[atimeofday]

Hmmm, odd. RAM usage shouldn't have a performance impact unless it reaches close to or above 100%. I will report back if I think of something which could be causing the issue. In the meantime, could you try different Proton versions and Proton-GE?

Alternatively... Does the performance issue occur after around 40 minutes of gameplay and appear or get worse with mouse movement? There has been a known issue bouncing around Proton support issues where that happens.

[duality1130]

I could try another version of Proton! Do you know the best-preferred version? I've been running 9.0.4 or Experimental.

Gameplay is affected around the 40 minute mark, yes, but I do often have to move the mouse around a bunch in AoE4.

Also a side question! Is it possible to disable the feature where you flick the mouse to the bottom of the screen and it opens all your open windows? It becomes a problem when i'm playing AoE4, especially when the window becomes Full Screen Borderless instead of Exclusive/Borderes.

[atimeofday]

Trying other proton versions is often kind of just throwing spaghetti at a wall until something maybe sticks, especially for older games. Latest, experimental, GE, then maybe Hotfix or older versions depending on protondb reports.

Here is the issue discussion which could be relevant to mouse-induced frame rate / frame pacing issues after ~40m:
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#11446 (comment)

Let us know if any of the tweaks in that thread seem to prevent the issue.

It should be possible to disable that feature; I didn't think any version of it was enabled by default. It is most likely caused by a Gnome extension which you can adjust the settings for or disable. Try opening the Extension Manager app and disabling things to see what might be causing it...

[duality1130]

Alrighty! I'll give that a try. Seems like a couple solutions could be LD_PRELOAD="" or disabling the Steam Overlay. For the former solution, would that be a part of the startup options for the game or an environment variable in the CLI?

[atimeofday]

Should be in the startup options for the game I think. Disabling the steam overlay for the game worked for me with Warframe, and then eventually for mysterious reasons I was able to turn it back on without the issue. Mileage seems to vary a lot by game, hardware, OS... hard to tell, but a few different things in that thread should be worth a shot at least.

[duality1130]

I'll give it a try after work. It's such a strange issue - the mouse of all things. Thank you!

[duality1130]

I found the extension! It's named Hot Edge in the Extension Manager. As of right now, I input the LD_PRELOAD="" and disabled the steam overlay. I'll see if this fixes it.

[duality1130]

I still kinda get stutters? Though, the game wasn't complaining that it was struggling. I could try a different version of Proton next.