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Dragonjion

PSA about the Steam client performance:

Turns out that in your Steam library, rare achievements are marked with an animated light effect. This animation somehow takes up an astounding amount of system resources especially on older PCs/laptops.

If you notice that your PC slows to a crawl whenever your steam library is open, you can go to Steam > Settings > Library and then turn on Low Performance Mode. It simply disables a few insignificant animations but the performance gains can be massive. On my old Dell Latitude, the CPU usage goes from >50% to <10% just from changing this one setting!

I have no idea why they put this under "Library" and not "Interface" cause I've been looking for a setting like this for months but I finally found out about this and now you have too!

8 March at 12:26 | Open on bark.lgbt
21 comments
Maddie
@njion i always found the linux steam client to be extraordinarily buggy, it constantly crashes whenever i try to use it, it's very annoying... i can't even do simple things like maximize the window or else it'll crash
8 March at 12:56 | Open on fedi.nano.lgbt
slonkazoid

@njion i do this on every machine no matter if it's a second gen mobile i5 or a 5600X

8 March at 13:37 | Open on ck.katzen.cafe
:bun: Stellar 🇫🇷

@njion@bark.lgbt this is awesome, we should contact valve to warn them about that right?

8 March at 13:37 | Open on mk.absturztau.be
cell
@njion there was a time when steam system requirements exceeded half-life
now it’s exceeding half-life 2
8 March at 13:38 | Open on pl.ebin.zone
SIN001R/E-SINEWAVE

@njion ...that explains why it's been even slower than usual lately, even on my relatively performant system with a 6700K

the steam client sucks in general but like it's been even worse recently

8 March at 13:47 | Open on mastodon.dragoncave.dev
Jay

@njion …you guys are playing the games in the Game Collector client?

8 March at 14:13 | Open on mastodon.online
Mair :a_blobcat_wobble:

@njion@bark.lgbt steam is such a terrible app on a technical level. I really wish they didn't have the DRM so I could just use a 3rd party launcher like heroic.

8 March at 14:16 | Open on kitsunes.club
james

@njion

Computer continue to be a mistake 😭

8 March at 14:31 | Open on strangeobject.space
bricky
@njion I enable that setting on initial setup because I'm not fond of animated anything that doesn't have a functional purpose, e.g. smooth scrolling. I wasn't aware it made such a difference, begging the question of whether it should be enabled when hardware acceleration isn't available or is worse than doing the work on the CPU. I also wonder if the previous Steam client had the same issue.

@tk
8 March at 14:49 | Open on shitposter.club
Octelly :verified_lesbian: :verified_bottom:

@njion@bark.lgbt it lags on my T460 regardless ​:catstare:​

8 March at 15:06 | Open on social.owo.digital
LonM

@njion It affects only rare achievements because it's a a conspiracy to nerf players that are too good.

8 March at 15:07 | Open on social.vivaldi.net
Robin Syl 🌸:blobcatreach:

@njion we make fun of electron apps but like, steam is the OG website in a trench coat

8 March at 16:11 | Open on meow.social
Григорий Клюшников

Robin Syl 🌸:blobcatreach:, it at least used to be a native app with a web view as opposed to the "let's ship the entire browser" nonsense.

9 March at 8:56
Lukyan

@njion I think it keeps animating after closing the window. I noticed neither the CPU use nor the animation, but I disabled it now.

It reminds me of the hot ISP modems with no business incentive for fixing them.

8 March at 17:49 | Open on lukyan.eu
TheTenuousOrder
Baloo Uriza

@njion Hmm, I'm on a 10 year old ThinkPad, so now I'm wondering what machines this even applies to.

8 March at 20:20 | Open on social.tulsa.ok.us
Dragonjion

@BalooUriza Well I was using a Latitude from 2015 I think with a gen 5 Intel i5

8 March at 23:29 | Open on bark.lgbt
Baloo Uriza

@njion OK, so the break is newer than 2005, older than 2012.

9 March at 1:01 | Open on social.tulsa.ok.us
Old Beekeeper Barks Backwards

@njion Many thanks for the tip. I stream from an Ideapad, and anything that reduces system load keeps me from overheating in the middle of a Minecraft stream.

9 March at 1:16 | Open on weirder.earth
maximemelian

@njion also consider not using steam on apple silicon macs as it's still an intel only binary and almost everything within steam now is based on webkit which translates very badly from intel to arm and results in bad performance and battery life.

9 March at 8:28 | Open on catcatnya.com
Григорий Клюшников

It kinda blows my mind that they keep rewriting it to Electron. Oh and it's been three years since the M1 came out yet there's still no macOS ARM build. Steam appears to be one of the cases of "developer experience over user experience" disease that's plaguing the entirety of the software industry now.

9 March at 8:53
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