Solus and AMD-freesync

xaldron

Hello,
I apologize if I am asking a question that's been asked before. Alltho I didn't find any threads nor here or on reddit about this subject, except one on reddit which is a year old and without too many clear answers.

I am basically wondering wheter amd-freesync is compatible with solus, and if so, how does one go forward to get it running?

From the googling I did I have found 2 claims about it which I am not sure are true:
1) AMD-freesync on linux only works for Ubuntu (and debian based distros) which where you can install AMD Propriety drivers.
2) AMD-Freesync does not work with games running on VUulkan (doesn't this apply to basically all steam games and bnet games?)

Any clarifications and pointers on the matter is greatly appreciated!

kaktuspalme

It should work out of the box.

Do a xrandr --props | grep vrr If you see vrr_capable: 1 freesync should work with that screen.

xaldron

Thanks a lot! Innstalling solus on my new system now, so I will give your command a try.

What about the vulkan "issue"? Is it true that freesync doesnt work with vulkan, and, doesnt most games on steam and battle.net run on vulkan?

kaktuspalme

I don't think so. I play many games using Proton and DXVK which uses Vulkan. Freesync definitely worked in those titles I controlled it using my Monitor as I'm always not sure if I need to activeate vsync or deactivate vsync to get freesync working. But with one of those settings it worked 🙂

Philbohackinz

I assume it would work in Solus. I have a freesync monitor that is not officially supported under Nvidia gsync and mine works. I'm not sure if there is anything that you need to toggle though. I have some settings I need to turn on with Nvidia.

Trillon008

For me it's not working. My FPS are droping below the freesync range and I have massive flickering. Like stroboscopic.
I also have wierd seg fault error in dmesg whenever I try to launch a game with freesync. I don't recall having these on Pop OS but It requires to do further testing.

ring0

This is an old post but it's relevant so I'll share it here. I just came back to Solus Budgie feels great. I used this method to enable Freesync/VRR on xorg:

sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-amdgpu.conf
Section "OutputClass"
     Identifier "AMD"
     MatchDriver "amdgpu"
     Driver "amdgpu"
     Option "VariableRefresh" "true"
     Option "TearFree" "true"
     Option "SWCursor" "true"
EndSection

Source
(Important: Notice how it now says "OutputClass" instead of "Device" like it did for many years. "Device" no longer works anymore, it was changed upstream at some point, you must now use "OutputClass".)

Edit: I was having another issue where my cursor would get stuck at 48hz on the desktop after exiting a game. I solved this by adding the "SWCursor" option in there.