Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

keegs · 2025-01-04 07:16:25

Hello,

I have been experiencing this issue as long as I can remember since I began using Arch. When playing certain games (seems most common among "graphically intense or modern" games, like Control or Helldivers 2, but also in Minecraft, note this means it is present in both Proton/Wine and native games), graphical issues arise over my play session. My screen will flicker at varying frequencies, and/or UI elements will become "stuck" with varying faded opacity (hereafter referred to as "burn-in"). This appears to develop at random times, but seems to possibly be tied to events such as changing video settings or "dramatic" graphical effects (explosions, lots of visual activity or noise across screen). The burn-in persists after process termination and even rebooting, including GRUB but specifically not including Windows, whereupon booting into the issue will disappear until GRUB or Arch is reentered. Burn-in fades or disappears with time, and possibly with repeated reboots or presence of much graphical activity in the affected area(s). Both issues are not visible with my screenshot and recording utilities (Spectacle and OBS, respectively). Following is system information, general logs, and a video of the issues taken with my smartphone. Please tell me what other information could be helpful or if the included information is not appropriately accessible.

System Info:
fastfetch
lspci

Logs:
journalctl -b -p 4

Visuals:
Video

Thank you all!

seth · 2025-01-04 10:24:24

The burn-in persists after process termination and even rebooting

issues are not visible with my screenshot and recording utilities

Does the general behavior remain or does the very specific artifact survive the reboot (ie. there's a game UI overlaying the boto messages)?

not including Window

3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

There's an intel IGP and an nvidia ampere on nvidia-open, does this only happen when utiliizing the nvidia GPU or also just on the intel chip?
Does it happen w/ the binary-only nvidia drivers? Do you have xf86-video-intel installed? (in case: remove it)
Please post the output of

qdbus6 org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation

and your complete Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General (steam runs on xwayland)

keegs · 2025-01-05 00:38:31

Here's the kwin info
And the Xorg log from a time the issue was observed (sorry for the different hosts, I noticed pastebin.com is to be avoided here but I don't yet know the best way to share otherwise, some sites seem to have size limits)

Does the general behavior remain or does the very specific artifact survive the reboot (ie. there's a game UI overlaying the boto messages)?

It's the specific artifacts, I once had my Minecraft server list stuck on my screen for a very long time while doing things on the desktop.

Does it happen w/ the binary-only nvidia drivers?

Yes, both issues occurred before I started using nvidia-open.

There's an intel IGP and an nvidia ampere on nvidia-open, does this only happen when utiliizing the Nvidia GPU or also just on the intel chip?

I decided to try testing this both ways. I disabled the Intel iGPU with a BIOS setting to force only Nvidia utilization, and the issues persisted after testing. There was no BIOS setting to do the other way around, so I used modprobe blacklist and udev rules, however the iGPU is so unservicable for games that I wouldn't say I was able to test it well; it was difficult to reach similar conditions under which the issues occurred with Nvidia, as sometimes my performance would tank to an apparent stall. With the little I did at ~5 fps, I did not perceive either of the issues.

I did find that fast startup was enabled and the legacy Intel package was installed, I have gotten rid of these as suggested. I know it was likely not the intention of these changes, but I did test afterwards and the issues persist.

seth · 2025-01-05 09:31:24

It's the specific artifacts, I once had my Minecraft server list stuck on my screen for a very long time while doing things on the desktop.

Which is entirely not the same as

The burn-in persists after process termination and even rebooting

seth wrote:

does the very specific artifact survive the reboot (ie. there's a game UI overlaying the boot messages)?

The xorg server runs in regular prime mode, all outputs are attached to the IGP which is (now) running on the modesetting driver.

nvidia_drm.fbdev=1

Make that "nvidia_drm.fbdev=0", the nvidia fbdev implementation is hit and miss.

Screen 0:
---------
Name: eDP-1
Enabled: 1
Geometry: 0,0,1707x960
Scale: 1.5
Refresh Rate: 240002
Adaptive Sync: automatic

disable the HiDPI scaling and run the output at a fixed 60Hz (you're gonna survive it and we need to know whether the -variable?- refresh rate plays a role here)
In that order. Then try to run plasma on X11.

keegs · 2025-01-06 08:39:22

Sorry for my original description of the issue being confusing or misleading.

It does appear the issue is connected to VRR, I tried turning this off before the suggested kernel parameter change or other configuration changes and neither of the issues occurred. I did also make the kernel parameter change and tested with the other changes. Scaling doesn't appear to make any difference, and 60Hz was definitely less prone to the issues but was only fully resolved with VRR disabled (as it was with 240Hz as well). Running Plasma on X11 does also resolve the issue, likely from VRR not being utilized. Should I mark this thread as resolved or do we dig deeper?

seth · 2025-01-06 11:43:36

X11 does also resolve the issue, likely from VRR not being utilized

grep -A5 kwin /usr/share/drirc.d/00-mesa-defaults.conf

Seems it's disabled for the kwin_x11 compositor but not kwin_wayland…

As for digging ourselves a rabbit hole:
You only have this problem when prime-run'ning stuff?
You could "export adaptive_sync=false" w/ that…

Arch Linux

#1 2025-01-04 07:16:25

Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

#2 2025-01-04 10:24:24

Re: Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

#3 2025-01-05 00:38:31

Re: Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

#4 2025-01-05 09:31:24

Re: Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

#5 2025-01-06 08:39:22

Re: Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

#6 2025-01-06 11:43:36

Re: Certain games cause screen flickering and "burn-in"

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