Hello, I am new here so if this has been answered before, or if this is the wrong place to ask, forgive me and I will move it to the appropriate area. (I am aware its very close to this question, but I am talking about hardware).
I am a Lutris user. I am currently installed on the latest version of Pop!_OS (22.04) and I also have an Nvidia 1070 TI. (I am aware that when it comes to GPUs, AMD > Nvidia). My Nvidia driver is 550 (not sure the exact one since I am not on my PC at the moment)
My issues with it is whenever I have an issue with a game, its almost always a graphics issue; Cyberpunk 2077 freezes when I try to run the diagnostic tool, and Fallout 3’s graphics are less than a frame per second. In addition, even if I match the runner version with whatever they mention on ProtonDB, I still have issues.
This leads me to believe that it might be a GPU issue; I have searched far and wide to see if others have the same GPU as me, but nothing so far.
Usually a freeze is indicative of overheating or bad driver. Have you cleaned it out in some time?
Your system sounds fine. I run a laptop with a 1060GTX in it as a secondary system and I have no issues with it. It is running Majanro though and proprietary drivers on Manjaro is a simple mouse click and the OS takes care of it and keeps the latest driver as they are upgraded. I am not sure how POP!_OS does it though. It is one Distro I have never tried, but that is not saying much as there are hundreds out there.
If it helps, that laptop is currently using 550.67 for a driver. No freezes on it. Everything works perfect. This leads me to think possibly dust buildup or so on yours.
Could be your card is going bad too, but that is rare.