NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

Smit · 2026-01-13 20:59:27

When playing doom ethernal, It works fine and gives me around 160+ FPS for like first 5 minutes after launching the game. Then, suddenly, performance drops to around ~50 FPS and the game becomes very stuttery. I checked the temperatures and they look normal to me (under 70C) and I've finished entire game (nightmare difficulty btw) on this machine on windows without any lag so I'm certain that this is not hardware limitation. VRAM is also sitting at 4.5GB while my GPU has 8GB.

It seems like my NVIDIA GPU (5060 laptop) is losing power. I plotted GPU power usage in KDE System Monitor, and when I minimize the game, I see a jump in power usage. When I focus the game again, the power usage drops.
.

At around ~50W, I do get playable ~160FPS but when it drops to ~27W, I get ~50FPS and it becomes stuttery.

I tried setting the power profile to Maximum using Lenovo LOQ’s built-in Fn + Q shortcut and from KDE's powerdevil (which does seem to work), but there was no change in behavior. I also tried launching the game with gamemoderun and switching to latest protonge but that didn’t help either.

I have `nvidia-powerd.service` enabled as mentioned on wiki and I tried setting Preferred Mode to Prefer Maximum Performance in NVIDIA Settings under PowerMizer, but that didn’t help either. I also set `vm.max_map_count = 2147483642` but no luck.

I think I have noticed this behavior in cs2 and dota2 as well but its not as noticeable in them as doom eternal.. maybe because they might not be that much demanding but I do notice sudden drop in fps in those games well.

Also `nvidia-smi -pl` does not work on my system

❯ sudo nvidia-smi -pl 50
Changing power management limit is not supported for GPU: 00000000:01:00.0.
Treating as warning and moving on.
All done.

System info -

Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.4
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.22.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.5-zen1-1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 250 w/ Radeon 780M Graphics
Memory: 72 GiB of RAM (66.6 GiB usable)
Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU
Manufacturer: LENOVO
Product Name: 83JG
System Version: LOQ 15AHP10

seth · 2026-01-14 11:15:07

Game is fullscreen? Does this happen when you're playing it in a window?

I've finished entire game (nightmare difficulty btw)

So I guess iddqd still works

Smit · 2026-01-15 15:47:07

seth wrote:

Game is fullscreen? Does this happen when you're playing it in a window?

It happens in fullscreen, Windowed and Borderless Window mode.

Also one more thing I notice is that it happens only when my laptop's internal display is ON. If I turn it OFF then the issue doesn't happen. Sorry I didn't mentioned that I was using external monitor but I thought it shouldn't matter much but it seems it does matter.
I guess I should report it to KDE devs and see what they think

seth wrote:

So I guess iddqd still works tongue

Nooo I didn't used any cheats

Last edited by Smit (2026-01-15 15:49:09)

seth · 2026-01-15 16:14:27

Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics
Graphics Processor 2: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 Laptop GPU

The eDP is gonna be wired to the AMD APU, the external monitor most likely to the nvidia GPU, so reverse prime scenario, maybe prime-sync issue.

Does it happen with KDE on Xorg?
Are you always using the external output (and that's where the game renders) or does this also happen when *only* using the internal display?

Smit · 2026-01-15 17:26:29

I'm not using reverse-prime (i think)
I've connected monitor to USB-C dock which connects my iGPU. HDMI port is connected to nvidia gpu. I'm not using HDMI port.

I haven't tested it with Xorg.. would like avoid going to Xorg.

Are you always using the external output (and that's where the game renders) or does this also happen when *only* using the internal display?

Game renders to external display while internal display is ON. There is option to choose display in game setting which seems to work in fullscreen mode. that setting is disabled in windowed mode.
The issue happens only when multiple(just two in my case) screens are ON. If I disable internal display and keep external display ON then issue doesn't happen. If I disconnect the monitor and use only internal display then issue also does not happen.

Last edited by Smit (2026-01-16 06:36:14)

seth · 2026-01-19 16:14:50

I haven't tested it with Xorg.. would like avoid going to Xorg.

Afaict there's no native DE client so you're likely running it on steam/proton what means you're running it on xwayland anyway.
=> Test the behavior on an X11 session and also post your xorg log - if the output presence has impact on the nvidia GPU it's not overly likely that the output isn't fed by the nvidia GPU.
Also, how does the system behave w/o the dock (when attaching the output via HDMI directly)?

Arch Linux

#1 2026-01-13 20:59:27

NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

#2 2026-01-14 11:15:07

Re: NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

#3 2026-01-15 15:47:07

Re: NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

#4 2026-01-15 16:14:27

Re: NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

#5 2026-01-15 17:26:29

Re: NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

#6 2026-01-19 16:14:50

Re: NVIDIA GPU's power drops when game is in focus

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