Arch Linux

27c7d61449d69e14eba53azzu

Member

Registered: 2015-10-04

Posts: 1

AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

I'm not sure what to do now, so time to ask the experts on here

Since my most recent package upgrade, I have encountered stuttering/low frame rate in various situations. I first noticed it on fullscreen youtube videos, but it's actually happening during normal desktop usage as well.

My desktop environment is KDE, hardware-wise I'm using a AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.

During my investigation of the issue, I have noticed some weird behaviors:

• On fullscreen firefox youtube video, if I have it on fullscreen but Alt-Tab out and show a liiitle window over the video, the stuttering goes away

• When I move my mouse normally, the cursor also stutters/has low frame rate. However, if I move my cursor a lot and the KDE feature for the "big cursor finder" comes on, then stuttering stops and everything is smooth

This led me to start up LACT and monitor my GPU clock speed. And sure enough, if I watch my youtube video on fullscreen (hardware decoding is on), the GPU clock speed stays around 40-100 MHz. When I play the youtube video in fullscreen with the little window on top (where there is no stuttering), 1000-2000 MHz. When I move the mouse normally, 40-100MHz. When I shake the cursor around, 1000-2000MHz.

I then used LACT to change the "Performance Level" from "Automatic" to "Highest Clocks", and the issue got a biiit better, but didn't disappear.

So, my main question seems to be: where do I go to possibly report this issue? Is it a kernel or KDE problem (I've heard Kernel 7.3.0 changed a bunch of stuff and may have some issues with amd gpus)? What can I try to do to work around it? Help?

Last edited by 27c7d61449d69e14eba53azzu (2026-10-23 11:13:56)

Lorestel

Member

Registered: 2022-06-08

Posts: 1

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

Yaaaay, I'm not alone in this. \o/

7900 XTX user here, and yeah, same. Started my day off yesterday by doing a system update. By around 3:30 am last night I finally called it quits in trying to find a solution. Oye..

Really is the same. It's just wanting to stay at its lowest clocks, barely ever going above 100 Mhz. Reverting back to the previous kernel I was on didn't fix things either, and there weren't any firmware updates that happened during that system update, so I'm somewhat baffled at what changed.

Hadn't yet tried what you did in forcing it to a different Performance Level, but that's what I was looking into shortly before seeing your post. Scares me a bit to mess with that stuff given the cost of gpus right now, but this is soooo horribly painful being stuck at these speeds.

If I figure anything out, I'll be sure to share it, and yeah, not sure where to go to report this.
Honestly, I'm just glad I'm not the lone soul in this.

intcoms

Member

Registered: 2026-10-24

Posts: 2

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

I'm suffering from this as well. Ran a system update and I've noted KDE graphics effects lagging as well as games in full screen, but not some games windowed.

I have a 7900XT and a R5 5600X, but I'm on kernel 7.2, so I assume this is a mesa issue or an issue in the KDE compositor?

koppi

Member

Registered: 2026-10-24

Posts: 1

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

This is bug in KDE 6.8.1. Setting KWIN_DRM_USE_COLOR_PIPELINE=1 in /etc/environment fixed it for me.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527628

intcoms

Member

Registered: 2026-10-24

Posts: 2

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

This is bug in KDE 6.8.1. Setting KWIN_DRM_USE_COLOR_PIPELINE=1 in /etc/environment fixed it for me.
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=527628

I've tried this (adding then rebooting); doesn't seem to fix it for me.

boozer

Member

Registered: 2023-11-27

Posts: 6

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

I'm not sure what to do now, so time to ask the experts on here

Since my most recent package upgrade, I have encountered stuttering/low frame rate in various situations. I first noticed it on fullscreen youtube videos, but it's actually happening during normal desktop usage as well.

My desktop environment is KDE, hardware-wise I'm using a AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D and AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT.

During my investigation of the issue, I have noticed some weird behaviors:

• On fullscreen firefox youtube video, if I have it on fullscreen but Alt-Tab out and show a liiitle window over the video, the stuttering goes away

• When I move my mouse normally, the cursor also stutters/has low frame rate. However, if I move my cursor a lot and the KDE feature for the "big cursor finder" comes on, then stuttering stops and everything is smooth

This led me to start up LACT and monitor my GPU clock speed. And sure enough, if I watch my youtube video on fullscreen (hardware decoding is on), the GPU clock speed stays around 40-100 MHz. When I play the youtube video in fullscreen with the little window on top (where there is no stuttering), 1000-2000 MHz. When I move the mouse normally, 40-100MHz. When I shake the cursor around, 1000-2000MHz.

I then used LACT to change the "Performance Level" from "Automatic" to "Highest Clocks", and the issue got a biiit better, but didn't disappear.

So, my main question seems to be: where do I go to possibly report this issue? Is it a kernel or KDE problem (I've heard Kernel 7.3.0 changed a bunch of stuff and may have some issues with amd gpus)? What can I try to do to work around it? Help?

I started having similar issues too, maybe a bit over a month ago.

At first, I thought this was a software issue. There might be software issues too, but mine was related to my hardware. I'm using ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F WIFI II, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X and AMD Radeon RX 6600 on my desktop PC.

Low-FPS desktop animations and graphics effects started appearing only on KDE Plasma Wayland session. Everything was smooth on X11 session. On Wayland, while opening or maximizing/minimizing e.g. Dolphin, nvtop showed a 100 % spike in GPU utilization. Desktop animations got really choppy when several application windows were open simultaneously. While this appeared on my desktop computer, my Lenovo Thinkpad T495 with far more inferior hardware had no issues with desktop animations or GPU utilization on KDE Plasma Wayland session.

I built my desktop PC myself years ago, so I decided to take a closer look inside the case, and I noticed I had plugged my VGA card to PCIe x16 slot 2. However, the ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F WIFI II manual recommends using PCIe x16 slot 1 with a single VGA card. I moved my VGA card to PCIe x16 slot 1, as recommended, and I've had zero issues with GPU performance on KDE Plasma Wayland session since.

This may not fix your issue, but it’s worth checking the hardware. You could also try moving the VGA card to a different PCIe slot.

siriusb

Member

Registered: 2010-01-01

Posts: 424

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

I don't have this issue, but I found amd gpu related error messages too many in my logs so I went hunting for a solution. Since you mentioned mouse cursor I thought you might want to check it. It worked for me:
https://wiki.pika-os.com/en/kwin-ra24-f … workaround

you can force KWin to use a software-based mouse cursor instead of hardware-driven DRM rendering. This bypasses the faulty screen format initialization.

shanti

Member

Registered: 2022-04-22

Posts: 4

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

Let me add my experience...Well it's been a long time I have been suffering a stuttering issue while playing videos, both with kodi or mpv within KDE.
Usually it starts playing well, and at some point (difficult to say it depends on the video), the videos accumulate stutter (yet no frame drop in the video player).

I tried manually changing the gpu clocks, although it improves or delays the stutters, it doesn't fix entirely the issue.

My only solution is to play from a tty using mpv with drm or vulkandrm. Even at default gpu clocks, there is no stuttering at all.

Video experience has been painful lately....I don't recall when it started...maybe about 1 year...

My cpu is Ryzen 7900 and GPU is AMD RX6700

Last edited by shanti (Today 10:50:12)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 78,526

Re: AMD GPU power profile problems (stuttering/low framerate)

mesa was last updated on     2026-10-17, kwin_wayland on     2026-10-23
The timing *heavily* suggests this is coming from KDE, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_L … cific_date

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