[BUG] Frame drop after round ends (and new game is about to start)

Munster

I am on Linux and not sure if this happens to Windows users, but I thought I'd post it here. Maybe it's a known issue or maybe someone knows a workaround.

The issue: A round ends (my team wins or loses), I see the scoreboard and everything is fine up until this point. Then the next map loads and on the screen where I can chose a team (US, RUS, etc) I get 4 or less FPS. This happens 9 out of 10 times.

It appears as if my video card runs out of memory after a round ends. It seems that the video data of the previous round is not being removed from GPU memory and as the next map loads into memory there is not enough video memory left and my frame rate drops from 60-100ish FPS to 2-4 FPS.

Sometimes it helps to use the console command HighResShot (and a random number between 1-4) a few times, but often enough it does nothing and the only option is to exit the game and start over. This is bad as I lose my spot on the server and have to abandon my squad. I don't SL much because of this reason.

- Which layer this occurred on, and which faction: This occurs on all layers randomly after the round ends. Last time it happened today on 5/4/21. I played on Narva RAAS v1, then the round ended and the next map was CAF GooseBay AAs v1. It was on [EGC] Elite Gaming Corp || New Players Welcome server. But I am sure that the server is not the reason for this issue.

- Whether others were seeing/experiencing the same: It seems that other Linux users experience the same issue:

    - https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/938#issuecomment-710699647

    - https://www.reddit.com/r/joinsquad/comments/mvzzmz/help_needed_tracking_down_a_bug/

- If known, which steps can be taken to reproduce the issue: Play until the round ends, then it could happen once the next map loads. And play on Linux I guess, since I don't know if this is an issue with Windows too.

- My System: 3900x, 64gb ram, 2080 super w/8gb memory, NVMe

- OS: Manjaro Linux, Steam w/Proton (latest versions)

- Game settings: all gfx settings are on low, shadows disabled as much as possible, no AA, 1440p resolution, uncapping memory does not make a difference

Happy to provide a UE4 Crash Log or whatever else could help to make the investigation easier.

Munster

@OWI_CrushDepth

There has been a lot of activity on this Github thread this year. Could you please take a look?

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Proton/issues/938

Also, copy-pasting a workaround and some graphic settings below that primarily cause this issue.

I did a little more testing and found that some graphic settings like AA can cause the described fps drops which cannot be recovered with HighResShot 320x200. I'd suggest to avoid the following graphic settings in Squad:

Avoid:

• Resolution Scale: any setting over 100 (100 is fine)
• AA Quality: not good at all on any setting, therefore turn off (if you need AA, you can disable AA when the new map shows and fps drop and then enabled it again and then run HighResShot 320x200, which also gets rid of the fps drop and let's you play the round with AA)
• Shadow quality: Medium - Epic (Low works fine)

With the settings below you can still experience fps drops when a new map loads, but HighResShot 320x200 resolves the issue (might have to be executed twice to fully recover fps).

OK to use:

• Shadows: Low
• Far Shadows, Close Shadows: On (big performance hit if enabled though)
• AO: Low - Epic
• Texture Quality: Low - Epic
• Anisotropic Filtering: 2-16
• Particle Quality: Low - Epic

As mentioned above, even though VRAM fills up completely this appears to be an issue with GPU LOAD, which goes up to 100% during these fps drops and goes back down to 60% after executing HighResShot 320x200.

@OWI_CrushDepth is it possible to turn AA off and back on when a new map loads and then execute HighResShot 320x200 twice in the console? That at least would get rid of some of the issue that Linux Squad players are experiencing.