495.44 results in flickering for xwayland windows

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Since the release of the 495 driver with a GBM backend and the implementation of xwayland support in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/f15729376d7c7ef183bd8f77156c281ff84c2bd9 xwayland windows on all compositors show “flickering” when windows (games) are not using vsync. Personally i have experienced this on sway 1.6.1, gnome 41 and have seen reports of other users on both platforms VSync goes in and out of sync (#2013) · Issues · GNOME / mutter · GitLab and NVIDIA (495) on sway tutorial + questions (Arch-based distros) - #58 by cmprmsd More precisely this flicker appears to be due to multiple lines of the frame rendering as transparent or dark gray (presumably as its swapped without vsync), instead of the native X11 artifact of tearing. This issue does not occur on mesa drivers for AMD or Intel devices.

This may be related to a similar issues noticed on KDE (which doesnt support choosing the GBM backend yet) using the EGLStreams backend where similar xwayland windows rendering without vsync result in the display of what i can only assume is the wrong frame. If we assume a program is outputting frames 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 during this misrendering it appears as though frames are rendered 1,3,2,5,4,7,8,10,9. Anther way to describe this might be objects appear to jitter between their previous location and their current location.

4 Likes
2

if this happens here too, i have tried gnome and sway

in some situations running the game in windowed mode runs without problems

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Might be the issue @ekurzinger is on it, as stated here: Glitches with nvidia driver 470 (optimus render offload) on xwayland with vulkan games - #13 by ekurzinger

Would be cool if we could get a status update. This issue is very annoying.

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This is on a single GPU device without any prime/optimus, so its unlikely to be precisely the same issue, but they could be related.

5

I’m also having this trouble on a single dedicated gpu with Sway and gbm on a desktop workstation.

6

Is there any hope to get this patched? :D

1 Like
7

bumping this thead with hope to get some devs attention to this issue, as its still not resolved as of 510.60.02 driver. flickering is heavy on xwayland windows and the only solution is to move the window around or force it to redraw somehow.

1 Like
8

Has anyone also noticed that when you play a heavy GPU usage game it makes the entire desktop super laggy on KDE plasma ?

9

+1, same issue here.
I am running Citrix in xwayland, lots of flickering and I have to switch back to x11. nvidia 510.60.02

10

@aplattner sorry for a direct mention, but do you know what’s causing this strong flickering on many applications with wlroots (and sway) on Ampere GPUs?
I don’t see this issue on older cards.

All drivers from 490(or 495) to 510 and r515 are affected.

If we find the root cause we can get an issue opened to fix it in the future.

Somebody from the NVIDIA devs stated that Sway works flawlessly with GBM and this is true if there wasn’t flickering.

Thanks in advance!

11

I think I’m experiencing the same issue, although it only surfaced with xorg-xwayland-hidpi. Perhaps the issue was there without the hidpi patch, but the scaling was so bad I never noticed. I’m on 4k with scale 2.

I can reproduce it two ways: a simple xwayland instance fullscreen and unfocused, OR xwayland in gamescope.

The symptoms are that there are artifacts and flickering in the same place I get tearing in Xorg (vsync? what’s that?), but instead of being simple tears, they have a black and white outline.

❯ uname -a
Linux cryptbreaker 5.18.5-zen1-1-zen #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Thu, 16 Jun 2022 20:40:47 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

❯ pacman -Q nvidia-dkms     
nvidia-dkms 515.48.07-2

❯ pacman -Q xorg-xwayland-hidpi-git 
xorg-xwayland-hidpi-git 21.1.4.r373.gb9b33d88e-1

❯ pacman -Q gamescope-git 
gamescope-git 3.11.33.beta1.r1.g1b3ad77-1

❯ pacman -Q sway-hidpi-git 
sway-hidpi-git r6939.122d8ce9-1

❯ pacman -Q wlroots-hidpi-git
wlroots-hidpi-git 0.16.0.r5597.91943a68a-1
13

I’m also having this issue. It made Firefox unusable until I forced it to launch under Wayland, it makes Discord unusable, and it makes Bitwig Studio unusable. I only have a few days left to start a return on my 4090, and I’m seriously thinking about it after fighting with NVIDIA’s drivers for several weeks.