Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

Ehllay · 2023-11-05 16:25:37

After updating to nvidia-dkms 545.29.02-2, I tried playing Terraria (and tModloader) and there were lots of random flickers, being specially bad on tmod. I can tweak settings like frame skip, parallax, lightning to almost get rid of the issue but it still flickers, just less. The levels of flickering are the following:
- Rapid black screen: color lightning, frame skip on or subtle, parallax 60%
- Less rapid black screen, mouse slowness: color lightning, frame skip off
- Random UI flicker: retro/trippy lightning, frame skip off, parallax 100%

I also tested on Minecraft and I got a initial black flicker when loading up a world but it went away quickly and didn't reappear when reentering a world, I only noticed a short one during my testing, but it didn't reappear.

I don't know if it's related to the update. I never had this issue before, even when I updated drivers once. I think it is because of Vulkan shaders, because the rest of my desktop works just fine, this issue seems to only affect games, but I don't really know the cause.

I use a GTX 1050 connected to 3440*1440 monitor via DisplayPort and Hyprland with hyprland-nvidia.

Last edited by Ehllay (2023-11-05 16:27:21)

seth · 2023-11-05 20:23:30

Cross-check the behavior w/ openbox (X11) and then please post your Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General

Ehllay · 2023-11-05 20:38:25

Yeah but I don't use X11 or openbox. I use Hyprland (Wayland compositor) so I can't really do that

seth · 2023-11-05 20:42:17

Yes, I can read.
The implication of "cross-check" was to install openbox and test the behavior there so we
1. know whether it's maybe hyprland-specific
2. get a useful log on the status-quo of your driver

Ehllay · 2023-11-05 20:46:12

Alright, I'll try to do that tomorrow. Maybe I could also try Xwayland as well because I have no experience with openbox, but either way I'll install it and see if it works from there.

seth · 2023-11-05 20:59:16

xwayland isn't a good idea, but every (uncomposited) X11 WM will do (eg. i3, if you prefer) - openbox is as basic a WM as it gets, which is why I usually suggest it for such tests (technically you don't need a WM at all)

korodarn · 2023-11-06 02:28:59

I'm having the same problem, and it doesn't seem to be occuring inside Plasma/KDE (x11), so it seems to be a combination of the driver upgrade + hyprland.

Plasma wayland is even more messed up than hyprland by far with the new driver, just shows a bunch of pointers and screen stays black. Gnome (wayland) is experiencing some oddities, like making it hard to type this post, but is a bit more useable for games.

Before the new driver all of these worked fine for me on RTX 3080 on wayland

Last edited by korodarn (2023-11-06 02:40:56)

seth · 2023-11-06 08:24:46

Because a lot of people somehow managed to screw the update (possibly after running into the packaging bug that lead to a version mismatch), does "glxinfo -B" (on X11) suggest you're running on the nvidia driver?
@korodarn can you post your xorg log?

mmbossoni · 2023-11-06 15:17:57

Notice that xwayland gaming is bad on nvidia 545 if you have high refresh monitor and game rendering at low refresh rate due to lack of explicit sync on wayland/xwayland and all compositors and because nvidia doesn't implement implicit sync
So, the issue with discord rubber banding on xwayland now happens with games as well

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/f … /220822/46
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/n … fps/269759
https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/5 … ate/271577

Also some helpful discussion URLs
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse … quests/967
https://github.com/NVIDIA/open-gpu-kern … ssions/532
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse … uests/1120
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse … ssues/1317

Give nvidia + wayland a few more years for prime time (or hope for wine wayland driver to get merged and picked up by proton)

Last edited by mmbossoni (2023-11-06 15:41:00)

Ehllay · 2023-11-06 16:28:55

Alright, I tested with openbox. No flickering whatsoever. Guess it's true it's a Wayland / Hyprland issue. I wouldn't mind using openbox for games for now, but it kinda bugs me. I haven't tried Xwayland just yet because: 1. I don't know how to launch games on Xwayland 2. Steam uses Xwayland anyway.

Also, about the logs, I would be happy to provide them, but openbox didn't log anything to ~/.local/share/xorg, in fact that directory doesn't even exist. I also noticed that openbox doesn't really clear the screen, "phantom windows" appear in the background when moving or closing windows, but it's probably due to openbox being rudimentary, plus it didn't affect the games themselves.

I did check Hyprland logs, and found a lot of Steam related windows that said things like "XWayland Window removed". I also grepped for errors and found a lot of

Tearing hint 94000440XXXXXX was attached to an unknown surface

and

onWindowRemovedTiling node null?

. However these seem to be related to the Steam app itself and not the games. I even tried to grep the game names but they were Steam windows for properties, not the actual game windows. Still, I think these are worth sharing. Also, since Steam uses Xwayland, my games probably run on Xwayland as well, so maybe it is a Xwayland issue. Perhaps if Steam used Wayland natively, no issues would arise, but I don't think they are gonna do that anytime soon, which is odd since I'm sure the Deck uses Wayland but whatever.

So, should I just wait until a fix is made or should I do something about it? Thanks

Last edited by Ehllay (2023-11-06 16:30:07)

mmbossoni · 2023-11-06 17:21:20

This is a NVIDIA specific issue.
AMD implements implicit sync, so xwayland works properly (including on Deck that uses a AMD gpu)

Last edited by mmbossoni (2023-11-06 17:21:43)

Ehllay · 2023-11-06 17:25:16

Yeah, I meant an Xwayland & Nvidia issue. Sorry for not providing clarification about that.

tdtooke · 2023-11-06 19:05:03

No flickering here. I can say that this particular release breaks vkd3d-proton with NV_dgcc enabled, but there is a whole other discussion about that in the nvidia forums. That one they'll have to fix.

seth · 2023-11-06 20:06:55

You can downgrade to the 535 versions of nvidia-dkms and nvidia-utils for the time being.

Openbox not clearing the root window properly sounds a bit odd, but you can
1. simply try to set a wallpaper
2. use an X11 compositor like picom
3. try a different X11 WM
if you'd rather use the newer driver w/ Xorg than the older driver w/ hyprland.

Ehllay · 2023-11-07 15:46:23

I'll probably keep both Openbox and the newer driver for the time being, as I don't want to break anything by rolling back to a previous version. Don't get me wrong, I have downgraded packages in the past, but not ones with dependencies or something as critical as video drivers (although I did have to downgrade hyprland-nvidia once).

I just hope they actually fix the issue and I don't have to wait until a mayor update is released, but I guess I'll take this as an opportunity to do more productive things instead of gaming ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I should probably close this post, but since the issue hasn't actually been solved, I will keep it open for now unless closing is requested. Thanks everyone!

Arch Linux

#1 2023-11-05 16:25:37

Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#2 2023-11-05 20:23:30

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#3 2023-11-05 20:38:25

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#4 2023-11-05 20:42:17

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#5 2023-11-05 20:46:12

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#6 2023-11-05 20:59:16

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#7 2023-11-06 02:28:59

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#8 2023-11-06 08:24:46

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#9 2023-11-06 15:17:57

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#10 2023-11-06 16:28:55

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#11 2023-11-06 17:21:20

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#12 2023-11-06 17:25:16

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#13 2023-11-06 19:05:03

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#14 2023-11-06 20:06:55

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

#15 2023-11-07 15:46:23

Re: Screen flicker on games after NVIDIA update

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