Screen Flashes Black w/ G-SYNC Compatible

WannaBeOCer

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WannaBeOCer

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brent

WannaBeOCer These are the ISOs I tried: Budge, KDE Plasma and Gnome.

you install these isos to your HDD then play the games in the installed DE, right?
Just checking.
I just looked online and that is a USD $5,000.00 graphics card you are using. I could buy a Jeep for that money...or a Piper Cub maybe🙂.

Also, you have the latest Nvidia package installed from the repo?
Other than the first sentence and the second-to-last sentence, I got nothing.
edit: actually did not

WannaBeOCer

brent Thanks for assisting, that’s correct Solus is installed directly on my drive along with the latest Nvidia drivers. I just want to confirm the issue isn’t just games. It’s multiple applications when launching them they randomly cause a black screen that flashes for a few seconds. After that the screen comes back, as mentioned it’s more of an irritation. This is the only distribution so far that I’ve encountered this black screen flash. Only difference I see is Variable refresh rate being enabled on the desktop on Solus while every other distro has VSync. If I disable VRR I don’t run into these randomly few second black screens. All the other distro I tested have VSync enabled on the desktop. While VRR works fine in games.

Off-topic: It was a $2,000 GPU when I purchased it. I use it for deep learning on Solus using Nvidia’s Tensorflow container along with games. The nice thing about the Titan RTX it has brought over professional features like full-speed FP32 accumulation throughput on its tensor cores and NVLink memory pooling. All the RTX GeForce cards are limited to 0.5x throughput.

Axios

WannaBeOCer I am no expert by any means on nvidia or games

After some reading think its because of g-sync from what I can tell only display port supported.
Its monitor syncing.
I think thats the cause no idea how to fix it for you if it is.
Gsync is NVIDIA's proprietary hardware and software implementation of VRR
Hdmi on that card is 2.0 VRR supported on 2.1
Monitor must support g-sync
(Just info) https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/titan-rtx.c3311

If I am wrong somebody correct me.

brent

Up-to-date Nvidia drivers and a functioning DE were all I had as far as my knowledge goes.
That said, all I can think of is did you try the older Nvidia? Did you try native Nouveau (sp?)?

You made it clear that disabling variable refresh rate eliminated the problem. I hope someone tuned into graphics can explain this to you. I'm no Sherlock, but that very much is significant. If your card worked flawlessly (no blinking) on every distro you've tried except Solus, then I'm sure it some minor tweak. But what minor tweak?

Issues like this (flash/blink) exist in many forms via the search function but it might take 2 hours of reading to find a tweak that works. It's my hope someone can get you in the right direction.

WannaBeOCer

Axios Thanks for your reply, I have a 27GN950 monitor which is G-Sync compatible certified which is Nvidia's implementation of Vesa Adaptive Sync. When I was using my Radeon VII I experienced a much more frustrating issue which caused the entire screen to flicker on the edges due to VRR being enabled on the desktop only on Solus. Again this issue only occurs on Solus and I believe this is due to VRR being enabled on the desktop. Windows, and every other Linux distribution I’ve tested has V-Sync enabled on the desktop when G-Sync compatible/FreeSync are enabled.

WannaBeOCer

Axios Went through that article but I don't see any mention of how to enable V-Sync just on the desktop. V-Sync works fine when G-Sync is disabled but that's not what I want to happen. Here's an example of Solus and openSUSE Tumbleweed. Solus' enables VRR on the desktop, even if I use an AMD GPU. Even though V-Sync is enabled on the desktop on openSUSE Tumbleweed VRR still works in games. When I follow that article you linked it disables VRR.

Axios

WannaBeOCer this how you want it?
V-Sync enabled on the desktop when G-Sync compatible/FreeSync are enabled.

WannaBeOCer

Axios Correct, this seems like the intended way for VRR to function as seen in every other operating system I’ve tested.

Axios

Dont really have a fix but after alot reading seems linux desktops appear not to support g-sync(if correct)
so that makes sense for the desktop and games use g-sync and thats the way you say its working.
Will see if I can find a fix
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=gsync-compatible-linux&num=1
It's important to check the box from the display configuration page as otherwise the G-SYNC functionality will not work even though the other options will still be listed from the OpenGL settings area.?

WannaBeOCer

Axios That’s incorrect G-Sync works fine using X11. I can see it’s working correctly using the monitor OSD. While on every other operating system has VSync enabled on the desktop but when I launch a game the OSD properly shows a variable refresh rate. That display configuration page option is only for non certified G-Sync compatible monitors. Mine is a certified monitor which is why it doesn’t have an option there.

VESA adaptive sync works fine, the issue is that it’s enabled on the desktop. While every other operating system I have tested has V-Sync enabled on the desktop.

VESA adaptive sync(GSync compatible/FreeSync) is working on both my Titan RTX/Radeon VII but I don’t want it enabled on the desktop because it causes problems.

The reason why my screen flickers when using AMD's FreeSync is due to my FPS being constantly around 48FPS which causes LFC to rapidly turn on and off causing brightness flickering. Nvidia handles LFC differently with G-Sync compatible which is why it doesn't flicker with the Nvidia GPU but instead I get flashes of black screens depending on the apps I launch. This makes sense why operating systems have V-Sync enabled on the desktop instead of VRR.

I just have no clue where the configuration would be, I tried comparing xorg configs from opensuse tumbleweed and solus but don't see a difference there.

Axios

WannaBeOCer Well what I read was wrong then,I know link was for that but put ?
didnt know if it was something you should look at.

What happened to me few updates back i started getting messed up windows when resizing and moving
them around on desktop what I ended up doing was making a conf file in usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/
with the right settings once i did that all my problems went away. I didnt have one for my intel for some reason
This is the line for the amd Option "VariableRefresh" "true" (not sure what nvidia is)

I know there is a nvidia file for that directory but am on diff computer right now you may have it already might check it out I know what you want just like having hard time figuring it out to.

Did some looking the settings I made in usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d/ ended up in my /var/log/Xorg.0.log
this is for amd but maybe might tell you something look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log and see if you can find (**) AMDGPU(0): Option "VariableRefresh" "true" (just the variablerefresh Part true is on I think)

(If I got it freaking confused again sorry,But my point is I think that file is where the settings may need to be)

WannaBeOCer

Axios Still can’t find the config needed to disable VRR on the desktop. Did a diff comparing the xorg.conf on Solus, tumbleweed, Ubuntu, Manjaro and Fedora and nothing was noticeable. I even created a new xorg config which was the same on all of them but Solus was the only distro that kept VRR enabled on the desktop.

I ended up just transitioning to using openSUSE Tumbleweed. I’ve been using Solus for 2.5 years. I enjoyed the stability thanks to the devs and maintainers. Solus definitely has the fastest package manager which was fantastic to use. I’ll be keeping my Solus install on the SSD and be ready to switch back when this is resolved. It’s just unpleasant to wait 3-5 seconds randomly when launching a program.