Glitches in Gnome animations and effects as well as in the steam window and in games at high framerates on a AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS APU in a Tuxedo Pulse 14 Gen3 Notebook
Affected version
The Hardware is a Tuxedo Pulse 14 Gen3 Notebook with a AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS APU
The integrated GPU of the APU is used.
These are the versions which I have tested where the glitches happen. I have not tested other distributions or GNOME versions on the hardware other than the ones listed below, which means, every version I tested has this bug.
- Mutter 46 beta on Fedora 40 Pre Release (nightly from 2024-02-18) with GNOME 46 beta and Kernel 6.8-rc4
- I've tested the Gnome Shell on Wayland session, which is the default on the live iso.
- Mutter 45.4 on Fedora 39 with GNOME 45.4 and Kernel 6.7.4
- The glitches happen in the Gnome Shell on both Wayland and Xorg
- The Gnome Classic Session also has the glitches, I have tested Gnome Classic on Wayland
- Mutter 45.3-4.2 on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed with GNOME 45.3-2.2 and Kernel 6.7.4
- I've tested the Gnome Shell on Wayland session, which is the default on the live iso.
Bug summary
First of all, why I think this is a Mutter bug. Since the glitches do not appear on the same hardware and same distribution in the same use cases when running KDE (I've tested Fedora 39 with KDE and Tuxedo OS with KDE, both of which didn't exhibit the glitches), I think it is most probably not a hardware problem, not a kernel bug or a mesa bug. And since the glitches also appear in the Gnome Classic Session, I don't think it is a Gnome Shell bug. Therefore, I think, the only place where the bug could be is in Mutter. But I could be wrong with this assumption, since I only have a high level understanding of how all of that works. I have also tested the RAM with memtest86, which ran it's tests successfully and did not report any errors. Since it is an APU and uses the integrated GPU, the RAM of the system is also the VRAM, which means, both RAM and VRAM are ok.
The glitches kind of resemble tearing, but more severe than tearing. I will attach videos that show the glitches. They can not be seen in a screenrecording, which I have tried with the GNOME screenrecording tool. Changing the scaling from 200% to 100% makes no difference. Changing the refresh rate of the display from 120Hz to 60Hz makes no difference.
The glitches happen about 50% of the time when I use the window overview feature of gnome (left upper corner or meta key). Here, they tend to appear in the lower half of the screen. They happen also about 50% of the time when I open or close the logout dialogue. The glitches also appear in the window of Steam, at random locations in the middle of the screen or below. I don't recall an instance where they did appear in the top half of the screen in any of these situations.
In games (I've only tested Shadow of the Tomb Raider), the glitches only appear when the game runs at high framerates. I had to turn the resolution as well as the graphics settings to the minimum to achieve this. They do not appear when the game runs with low framerates, for example when using a higher resolution and higher graphics settings. The glitches also tend to only appear in the middle of the screen or below.
If there are any other steps or things I can do to help with finding the source of this bug, I would be very glad to help.
Steps to reproduce
- Start a live CD, or install a distribution out of the ones I have listed in the "Affected Versions" section on a Tuxedo Pulse 14 Gen3 Notebook with a AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS APU
- Use the window overview feature (left upper corner or meta key)
- Or start Steam, where the glitches randomly appear inside the window
- Or start a game which renders at high framerates (I have only tested Shadow of the Tomb Raider)
What happened
Produces graphical artifacts/glitches in certain situations. I wrote a more detailed description in the "Bug summary" section.
What did you expect to happen
Not glitches, as is the case with KDE on the same hardware even on the same version of the same distribution.
Relevant logs, screenshots, screencasts etc.
If I open a terminal and let "journalctl -f" run while I provoke the bug, no errors or any other logs appear.
Unfortunately, if I just do a screenrecording with the default GNOME screencapture tool, the glitches are not visible, so I had to film the screen with my phone. I apologize for this crude solution.
Here is the bug happening when using the window overview feature and the logout dialogue:
Here is the bug happening in the Steam window:
Here is the bug happening when running a game at high framerates. They start to appear in the second half of the video:
I also have videos of the bug not happening on KDE which I could upload if someone wants to see that it is actually working on KDE. Otherwise, I'll preserve the storage space on the gitlab server and not upload them.