Stutering and low fps scrolling in browsers on Wayland when GSP firmware is enabled

When GSP firmware is enabled on Wayland session, scrolling in all browsers (Google Chrome, Brave-chromium based, Firefox) has stuttering and generally low fps. (My monitor has 170Hz and the scrolling is dropping down to around 90-100FPS) (Everything is recorded and visible on the videos, please make sure to watch them, to fully understand the problem).
Tested on:
*open-module driver with GSP ON (since I can’t disable GSP with open module) (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EadKGwoSpO8)

*proprietary driver with GSP ON (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RNl45OVw_g)

*proprietary driver with GSP OFF (video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-uB-iZrOA)

WIth open-module driver, and proprietary driver with GSP ON, there is stuttering, and low fps when scrolling in all 3 browsers. HOWEVER, when at the same time OBS is launched and is actively recording (or other screen capturing software), the scrolling becomes almost perfect again. And as soon, as the recording is stopped, it begins to stutter again.

With proprietary driver with GSP OFF, scrolling is almost perfect no matter if recording with OBS or not.

Driver: 560.35.03 (565.57.01 tested on 26 October 2024 - no difference)
Cuda: 12.6
GPU: GTX 1660Ti
OS: Latest Arch Linux
DE: KDE Plasma 6.2.2

EDIT: Uploaded nvidia-bug-reports logs for all 3 situations described
nvidia-bug-report-proprietary-GSP_ON.log.gz (1.4 MB)
nvidia-bug-report-proprietary-GSP_OFF.log.gz (1.3 MB)
nvidia-bug-report-open-module.log.gz (889.5 KB)

3 Likes

Can confirm, using Hyprland here (on default GPU settings mostly) and been constantly rolling back to nvidia-dkms 560.35.03-2 every update since Chromium apps stutter. Using testufo.com my browser framerate drops from 144fps to 24fps after the updates. Turning off hardware acceleration helps in some apps (eg Chrome, but not Discord), but distorts colors heavily. Would love a fix so I can stop rolling back updates.

Did I understand right, that on 560.35.03-2 driver with GSP firmware enabled, you DO NOT experience problems?

Just checked, GSP version is N/A currently on the old driver that does work. Didn’t check whether it’s enabled in the new version

1 Like

Facing the same issue on 565.57.01, I hads since introducing explcit sync version till now. my internal screen is using intel iGPU so it’s not facing the issue but my external HDMI is always using nvidia and FPS there drops from supposed 60 to 30 and hovers to 40 sometime but most of the time at 30 and the mouse movement feels slow and Youtube drops alot of frames. When I disable GSP firmware This issue gets resolved but I want to use open kernel drivers since the closed ones will soon become legacy and I’m facing the same issue there and I can’t disable GSP firmware at all on the open kernel ersion (I know it’s by design).

2 Likes

Had kind of the same issues. The cachyos repo drivers do fix this. Only issue still appearing: while playing a game, it feels stuttery (20-30fps). When I start playing a video in the background, the game works smooth.

What do you mean “cachyos repo drivers fix this”? I’m also using cachyos repos, and it does 0 diffrence. Did you check the fps graphs like I did in the videos?

Yes, all my videos work fully stable, and work at the right fps

What videos? I’m sorry, but I don’t know aht are you talking about, and I’m not sure if you read my comments and post

I have exactly the same problem. Didn’t even use OBS before. Installed it, started a record and boom, Firefox and other apps suddenly became smooth.

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Considering that behaviour, I suspect that problem with general power-managment could be the issue. Because how can we explain this workaround which includes recording a screen? I think when screen is being recorder with Nvidia, the GPU goes to some higher power state or something like that, and because of that, everything becomes smooth again.

PS. @lord if you care about every bit of performance, use GpuScreenRecorder instead of OBS - it’s much lighter, and uses almost 0 resources, while still delivering the same workout of everything being smooth.

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I thought about power management too. As far as I remember GSP firmware is exactly here to offload tasks like this. Otherwise driver will manage GPU itself. So basically GSP firmware has a bug which has to be fixed.

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I have the same issue. Can we create a bug report?

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I think this might be related to Frequent lags and loss of smoothness in KDE Plasma with dual monitors on NVIDIA 3070 Ti (Wayland/X11) - #13 by VladTop46

I found another workaround by forcing the Intel IGPU frequency. Might be related to Poor multi-GPU performance due to CPU-side stalls in gbm_surface_lock_front_buffer · Issue #743 · NVIDIA/open-gpu-kernel-modules · GitHub

Hi All,
I have filed a bug 5052286 internally for tracking purpose.
Shall keep updated on the progress of local repro.

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Workaround which I use:

  • Disable GSP
  • Use chrome through xWayland (X11)

Basically any xWayland app works smoother: vscode, chromium, etc.

(tested on: arch, nvidia 565.77-12, Gnome, mutter-performance)

I will add, that few month later, I realised it’s connected to Performance States. If you are interested - search around this topic.

I noticed that when scrolling the browser the performance mode switches between P8 and P5.
May be we can set minimum performance to P5 mode when browser app is focused?

I don’t know. I just pointed out the direction, which the problem described in the topic comes from.