[SOLVED] Graphical Glitches in Desktop Mode (ROG Ally Z1E, version 41.20250409.1)
So, I started noticing this yesterday after doing an update (I'm aware I can rollback, just letting it be known here).
It seems quite similar to the previous issues that arose in Gamemode, related to newest mesa at the time (correct me if I'm wrong), that had the temporary workaround of either rolling back or setting VRAM to a high enough value.
Only this time it's not happening in Gamemode, but in Desktop Mode.
I didn't take a screenshot in time to show it happening in applications, but I got a much more prolonged effect in Minecraft, as seen in the screenshot.
I've also yet to reboot and change the VRAM value to check if this fixes it like last time, will update when I do (and also post further screenshots when I see it happen again and get it in time).
I don't think I changed anything in particular that could've caused this, but it's always possible.
(KDE, btw)
107 Replies
I also have the Z1E, I'm going to rebase to 41.20250409.1 and see if I can reproduce it. Does it happen in any game that uses 3d graphics?
I'll get back to you on that
haven't tested with a GPU-bound game yet, but while I was going around discord I managed to find these again
I ended up testing Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered for a little while; didn't experience any graphical glitches in the textures or models, but, curiously, it did pop a line like this every now and again in the settings menu in particular
I wasn't able to screenshot in time though, as it was flashing and then eventually it kind of stopped
I haven't been able to reproduce in any of my games. Let's see if anyone else is having issues with Minecraft in the 41.20250409.1 update
Sadly I don't have minecraft to test
It wasn't just in MC, but I get it.
Oh well, guess I'll stick to 20250331 for now, as after I rebased to it everything was perfect.
Is there any chance it could've been something in the update itself? Would rebasing back to 0409.1 and seeing if things are good be worth a shot at all?
I'd stick with 20250331 until the next stable release comes out, rebase to that and see if your issue is fixed or not. Else just stick with 20250331 for a while.
Might be worth putting a link to this in the general #🎮bazzite chat and see if anyone else is having the same issue, the Z1E is pretty popular, hopefully someone can reproduce what you are seeing and figure out what is happening.
I attempted it anyway, just for the heck of it, but no dice indeed. Just compliment this:
But yeah, I'll do as you say
Wait this could potentially be caused by the amd sg_display kargs
You could try manually removing the karg
so removing the sg_display=0?
or turning it to 1?
Its the scatter/gather feature of amdgpu driver
It might make your display flicker if yoh enable
was it 1 by default?
Doesn't matter how
Removing turns it on
1 turns it on
right
I'll try that then
If display flickers after re-enabling that's a bug and youll have to turn it off again
gotcha, I'll give it a try now and stress test it a bit
Some internal displays dont like the scatter/gather feature
But it prevents corruption during high RAM stress
Since gpu uses RAM
right, VRAM and RAM sharing the same pool
Well it claims its own pool but youre still limited to bandwidth
alrighty, ostree rebuilding with amdgpu.sg_display=0 removed
It might or might not help. And if your screen flickers its because of that driver feature
alrighty, I'll update in a bit
would you say that even if this does fix it, it's something that might/should be addressed in the future so it can be disabled?
oh, neat, I didn't know Plymouth had a screen for these rebases, showing me that it's updating kargs and all
it didn't cause flickering, but it certainly didn't fix it either
(I keep testing MC because it's where it seems I can replicate it the most consistently, but again there were similar pop ins in discord UI and the browser, like the earlier screenshots)
0331 it is
If screen doesnt flicker its better to leave it on
It was disabled in bazzite as it was causing flickering for a lot of people
But its default on by amd
gotcha
I rebased to 0331, but I'll turn it on again
only now did it hit me; I do believe I might've had a crash or two in the past that I suspected had something to do with the RAM/VRAM split, how long ago has bazzite had this off? perhaps I wouldn't experience those again?
Not long ago. CMIIW, it was because of MSI Claw support, but I don't remember exactly. Having it disabled causes some bad display glitches during intensive gaming or stuff like compiling like antheas does.
The feature allows copying the framebuffer directly from RAM without needing direct access to a contiguous block of memory space.
Without the feature, when the memory is stressed you start getting fragmented pieces of the framebuffer data, which leads to display glitches.
But it shouldn't cause crashes. (I think)
huh, I've tried removing it twice now, and it doesn't seem like it has applied? I'm on 0331 now
is it a forced kernel argument prior to 0409?
okay, removing the karg didn't work, but apparently replacing it with the new value of 1 did
perhaps that happened with 0409 and I didn't notice... welp, guess I'll try another rebase and see
has anyone found a solution to this I am on the z1 and am having the same issue
if anyone has please ping me as I am also stuck and dont know what to do
btw I recommend setting the vram to auto in your bios so you wont have to deal w vram issues
I did, it's what I usually have it on
alr thats good then
I'm currently testing the aforementioned solution, not removing the karg but instead replacing the value 0 with 1 on 0409.1, so far so good
but I can't say for sure
not stress tested enough
thing is
for me
solving at times
well a temp solution
is restarting the handheld
it works
but i have seen it come back later
I tested a few games
right, but I've done that quite a few times today from rebasing back and forth, with the deleting the karg (which I then noticed didn't actually work), and it came back relatively quickly
so I'm hoping me trying it for a while now might give me more hope of it being "fixed"
any old games
I have had 0 issues with
its only newer ones
and the menu screen
if you find something please tell me
i wont mess around since I am a noobie when it comes to linux
yeah, my particularly issue doesn't really pertain specifically to games; as I mentioned, I saw disturbances popping in and around even in the Discord App or the browser, it's just where it was most noticeable and easy to capture a screenshot of
same w firefox
any idea at least to what could be causing it
I'm not sure why exactly this would be triggered in this particular update, I suppose something in mesa since there was a version change
but as CheckYourFax mentioned, it's likely that it has something to do with how RAM and VRAM interact, and these corruption bits can pop up; apparently turning this flag on might fix it as it enables a new feature that helps with RAM/VRAM, but was off by default as it could cause display issues in some devices, such as flickering
well damn it
no flickering so far, no distortions either, I'll keep at it and see if anything pops up
did the artifacting at least stop?
but since it's not flickering, apparently, as CheckYourFax said, it's best to just keep the flag on anyway
I've been on MC for a bit, and no problems like before
yesterday I even had chest and sign textures completely screwed up
but earlier today, still with this version, they weren't like that, it seems a bit hit or miss
which is why I said I'm still trying to push this thing so I can make sure it can be called "fixed"
yeah
in your opinion should I turn flag on
but again, apparently it's best you do it anyway, if flickering doesn't occur with it
is the command to do so
you could always disable it again by swapping the 0 and 1
so thats to enagle it
enable*
yepp
to disable
yes?
that's right
alright thanks for the help
will do some testing on my side as well
and report back
I am using the z1
not z1e
btw
still worth testing, we'll report back if it doesn't fix it đź‘Ť
any tricks you know of to increase the battery life
if we don't, then we can come back later and call it fixed
yeah
oh, that's a lost battle
keep refresh rate down, 10w TDP, and only as bright as you need it, as well as bluetooth and wifi enabled only when needed
other than that, there's no magical solution
that is what i have been doing
i have noticed
the magic number
is around
13 watts
to have
you can always mod it with a better battery as well
a playable performance
while also having a good battery life
ah, yeah, you can play around with custom TDP as well
depending on the game
10 watts is too low for some games
but honestly
sure
yeah
it depends
for elden ring i use 15 to 18
for left4dead
i use 10
anyways, that's not for this topic, but yeah, play with TDP and use whatever is the lowest you can
for metro 2033
i use 12
13*
yep sorry
got off topic
will do this rn
@JohnyLPM done
now we test
indeed we do, so far so good for me
before i set it up
i saw some flickering
on my game mode
that stopped now
@JohnyLPM testing half life mmod
so far so good
0 flickering
0 artifacting
will update daily after a gaming session
some minor lighting flickering on black mesa
NOTE
LIGHTING ONLY
NOTHING ELSE
sooo, that's good? did you have any flickering of any kind before any of this?
didnt test it before
rolling to ge proton 27
good news
launching it in dx9
using ge proton 27
fixed the flickering
cool. so proton issue, probably not caused by the scatter/gather feature
yeah
@JohnyLPM I would like to thank you as so far this seems to be working
thanks for the help
don't thank me, CheckYourFax proposed the fix
@CheckYourFax thank you
@antheas maybe placebo, but maybe sg_display=0 is causing issues with users?
these are not the only users with weird glitches
but it doesn't seem entirely related, so it could be placebo (the setting deals mostly with the framebuffer, not rendering, but who knows)
It is it's removed in testing
so far so good tested a few more games like goat simulator and some minor unheard of titles
no graphical artifacting
@JohnyLPM so far every game I have played from modern to old pre 2010 games have ran with no graphical artificing
no flickering as well
wbu?
yeah, after a day's worth of normal use, equivalent or more so than that of yesterday's, I can also fairly safely say that the flag seems to have fixed it
so I believe I can now thank CheckYourFax and call this resolved
indeed
bad news
started noticing some minor artifacting
right now
it's not fully solved yet
I turned on forced composite
and restarted it
it went away rn
but will follow up
@JohnyLPM
ok it seems safe so far
I guess 1 incident isn't THAT BAD
but still annoying af
what's the solution again? i'm facing the same issue, same hardware
here
@kendo.ykn
note might
MIGHT
cause flickering
but only solution so far
also use force composite
idk how but it works
huh, I haven't noticed anything yet
it was 1 time
it's when I booted back into game mode from desktop
after I restarted and pressed on forced composite
it works fine now
okay
again will report if any more issued arise
@JohnyLPM this is a vram issue yeah?
with how the OS interacts between the ram and vram?
@JohnyLPM
this is interesting
this was already known to be a fix
especially when artifacting happenned in gamemode
desktop mode was a different thing, which is why I made this thread
good point
god damn it man
eventually it was fixed and an updated came out, but you say now it's been happening again?
yes
aside from setting the vram, you could do the generic solution, rebase to last known good version
in my case I haven't seen artifacting in gamemode yet, but that'd be that
might be cuz the fix was for z1e cpus?
idk
remember
I am using z1
but yeah, maybe revive the other thread or create a new one, to call attention to it
There is minor artifacting on mesa .3
But it's very minor
I see, that explains it happening only once for Emperor Pigeon
oh that explains it
it looked like a few red dots on the top left of my screen after I switched to gamemode
would that match the description?
no\
oh shit
like legit like this but on the top left
the bug looks like artifacting on icons
oh then mine was smth else
ik it's not hardware related it's definitely software
could it has just been
a 1 time bug thing?
@JohnyLPM sorry for le ping but what do you think
1 time thing bug?
if it was just one time, ignore it
it's not worth getting worked up about
when it becomes recurrent and replicable, then it's worthy of debate
i just have a mind that overthinks
but right now you're just relying on memory, what it "looked like", and it's hard to really test anything against it
so thats why
yeah
most likely a 1 time thing
been playing all day
didnt happen again
Newton's Flaming Laser Sword:
“If a question cannot be answered through experiment, it is not worth asking”
true true
was this change reverted? had very similar looking artifacts on legion go, rebasing onto testing fixed it but it came back when I updated to f42
oh yeah seems like it might've been as it's =0 for me. will try running the command to set it to 1