[Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

evorster · 2025-01-04 07:39:28

Hi there!

I have this weird issue where the monitor in my laptop and the external monitor pauses for a couple of frames every few seconds.
It does not happen on every session, but enough for it to be really annoying, especially when watching Youtube videos and playing games.

I need some help in tracking down what is causing this issue.

Thinking that it might a a driver issue in the kernel, I filed a bug report with the amdgpu people:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/3873

It could also be a Wayland issue, as that is my daily driver.

Could also be kwin, as I run a KDE desktop.

The journal also looks identical between sessions where this bug shows up, and where it is not showing up.

Are there any tools which shows the throughput of processes? Glances does not really show any single process using too much CPU.

In short, any help or ideas of things to check while this is happening would be well appreciated.

Also, not sure if this is the right place to post this, but I know some really knowledgeable people hang out here.

Last edited by evorster (2025-01-05 08:03:56)

seth · 2025-01-04 10:02:15

it might … It could … Could also

Yes. So narrow that down, try KDE on X11, openbox on X11, the LTS kernel and also there seems an amdgpu specific issue w/ mesa 24.3, so try downgradng to mesa 24.2.7
There've also been reports about PSR related issues w/ amdgpu and the 6.12 kernels, try to add "amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x10" to the https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Kernel_parameters

evorster · 2025-01-04 11:14:44

Hi Seth, thanks for taking a look.

In my bug report to the amdgpu folks there are of course a lot more details than listed here.

My system does run into the PSR related issues, and so the kernel parameter amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x10 is already active on my system. So, not a PSR issue.
I have also seen this issue as far back as kernel version 6.6-rc7, so it does not appear to be kernel related.

I was not aware of the mesa issue, that is definitely something to try, as well as running X11 and openbox.

Thanks for the pointers!
I'll come back to you once I have narrowed it down.

One thing that is quite curious to me is that the issue is not always present. When I see the issue, I can just log out and back in, and then it is gone. Unfortunately it makes testing for the issue quite tedious as I have to reboot a few times to be sure that whatever change I made did actually make a difference.

evorster · 2025-01-04 11:50:20

I'll be using this thread to post my findings as I keep track of them.
I see this issue as well when starting an X11 session with KDE.
Have not downgraded mesa.

evorster · 2025-01-04 11:56:46

Downgraded mesa, and have not seen the issue over two reboots.
Running Wayland and KDE

Do you have any more information on the mesa issue, please?

seth · 2025-01-04 12:11:21

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=301798

On a formal note,

I'll be using this thread to post my findings as I keep track of them.

Please don't blog. Edit your previous posts to men them until somebody actually replies.

evorster · 2025-01-04 13:00:27

Noted on the blog.

Thanks for the link to the mesa issue. It does not look anything like my issue, as I don't see any errors in the journal when this issue is manifesting itself.
However, I have also not seen my issue since downgrading mesa, so this would point to mesa having another issue on my system, at least. I'll give the system a few more reboots just to make absolutely sure that downgrading mesa did fix the issue, and then I'll go around to the mesa developers and see if they can shine a light on what is happening.

Again, thanks for the help!

evorster · 2025-01-05 08:05:38

After numerous reboots with mesa 24.2.7 the issue was not apparent.
I then installed mesa-git, and this issue is still gone.
So whatever it was, it is a transient issue with mesa.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-01-04 07:39:28

[Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#2 2025-01-04 10:02:15

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#3 2025-01-04 11:14:44

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#4 2025-01-04 11:50:20

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#5 2025-01-04 11:56:46

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#6 2025-01-04 12:11:21

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#7 2025-01-04 13:00:27

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

#8 2025-01-05 08:05:38

Re: [Solved] Screens pausing for a few frames every couple of seconds.

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