Screen Goes Black for a Few Seconds When Alt-Tabbing out of games with VRR at 240Hz on Wayland

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hi,

I’ve been experiencing an issue on Wayland when using Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) enabled at a high refresh rate (240Hz), my screen goes black for a few seconds whenever I alt-tab out of games.

If I disable VRR, but keep my monitor’s refresh rate at 240Hz, alt-tabbing works fine without any black screen. Similarly, if I lower my monitor’s refresh rate to something like 144Hz and keep VRR enabled, the problem doesn’t occur either.

For context:

  • My monitor, cable, and GPU all support HDMI 2.1, which should provide enough bandwidth for 3440x1440 @ 240Hz.
  • This issue does not happen when I use the same monitor and HDMI cable with an AMD GPU—it only occurs with my current 4090.

In my journalctl i see the following whenever i alt tab at high refresh rates:

(../mutter/clutter/clutter/clutter-frame-clock.c:1155):clutter_frame_clock_dispatch: code should not be reached

Thanks

2

I’ve also just tried on KDE too and i get the same results when VRR is set to automatic.

The only difference is if i set VRR to always on then it works as expected, and i don’t get a black screen when alt tabbing and VRR still functions.

Also here is my nvidia-bug-report:
nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (332.4 KB)

3

I see this issue with my 4090 on Plasma Wayland as well, also running a 240hz monitor although it’s maxed out at 120hz with adaptive sync over HDMI 2.1