RTX 5090 often freezes presentation for 3-5 seconds in certain games

[matte-schwartz]

NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel Modules Version

570.123.18

Please confirm this issue does not happen with the proprietary driver (of the same version). This issue tracker is only for bugs specific to the open kernel driver.

• I confirm that this does not happen with the proprietary driver package.

Operating System and Version

CachyOS (Arch Linux)

Kernel Release

Linux blackwell 6.12.33-1-cachyos-lts #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:43:36 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Please confirm you are running a stable release kernel (e.g. not a -rc). We do not accept bug reports for unreleased kernels.

• I am running on a stable kernel release.

Hardware: GPU

GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (UUID: GPU-addf70ec-1a4e-f8db-39bc-59d1ab271798)

Describe the bug

When playing certain titles on my RTX 5090 rig, I experience frequent "freezes" where the game window will freeze but some audio continues to play in the background. During the freezes, I am able to use everything else on my PC normally without any indications of a GPU hang. After 3-5 seconds, the game "unfreezes" and then catches up to where it should be.

This happens with every compositor I have tried: KWin wayland, cosmic-comp, and gamescope. I have tried every 570 and 575 driver release and experience this issue on all of them.

Games I experience this freezing with include:

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (DX12)
• The First Berserker: Khazan (DX11 and DX12)
• Star Citizen (DX11)
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (DX12)

Games I do not experience this freezing with include:

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance (DX11)
• Horizon: Forbidden West (DX12)
• Death Stranding

To Reproduce

KWin repro steps:

1. Launch Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on an RTX 5090 (settings should not matter)
2. Play the game for 5-20 minutes

At some random point in that timespan, you should start running into this freezing bug.

Gamescope repro steps:

1. Launch Steam inside of gamescope with gamescope -e -f -h <height> -w <width> -r <refresh rate> --mangoapp --adaptive-sync -- steam -steamdeck -steamos3 -steampal -gamepadui
2. Launch Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (make sure the only launch option you are using is SteamDeck=0 %command%)
3. Play the game for 5-20 minutes
4. When you encounter a freeze, try pulling up one of the Steam side menus with the Xbox logo or Shift + Tab on your keyboard

You should see a similar effect to the gameplay clip I posted below

Bug Incidence

Always

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz

steam-1903340.log

More Info

One interesting tidbit I found is that I am able to "unfreeze" the game if I pull up a separate DRM plane, like one of the Steam side menus when running Steam's GamepadUI inside of gamescope. An example of this is here:

clair-obscur-freeze.mp4

You can see at the end of the clip it gets stuck for a few seconds but the instant I pull up the side menu, it unfreezes.

[matte-schwartz]

Apparently another way to unfreeze presentation is to pull up a different app window (like ulauncher) on top of the main game window if you're using a desktop environment to game.

Haven't been able to reproduce this issue on my 4000 series laptop in dGPU mode yet or on any of my AMD rigs under identical usage conditions, only on Blackwell.

[Arulan]

I think I'm getting the same thing here with Kingdom Come: Deliverance II on a 5090.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/570-release-feedback-discussion/321956/554?u=arulan7106

[matte-schwartz]

@Arulan yes that looks very similar.

Did some more tinkering this weekend and can confirm: 1. disabling VK_KHR_present_wait has no effect, 2. disabling MPO in the nvidia module has no effect

[mgruberb]

FYI, I had this exact issue on Clair Obscur on my 5080 when using Proton Experimental Bleeding Edge about 3 weeks ago. Switching back to the "stable" Proton 10.0-1 beta fixed it for me. Not sure about the exact causal relation, but maybe this makes it easier to find the trigger.

EDIT: Scratch that. After more testing the issue popped up again with Clair Obscur, but only after several successful longer play sessions today after playing for an hour or so. Same issue also popped up after playing Mirror's Edge Catalyst (DX11) for ~15 Minutes via Proton 8.0.5. So not related to any Proton version and appears to be quite random. Sorry.

[matte-schwartz]

already testing with that, no luck

edit: going to try clearing out the prefix and re-downloading Proton 10 just to confirm

[SimpleHeuristics]

I have this happening as well. On an AM5 system.

I have a friend with an AM4 system and same GPU (5090 FE) and this doesn't happen on their system for some reason running the same version of proton and OS.

Running on Bazzite May 29 Stable as that was the last driver where Clair Obscur would launch.

[matte-schwartz]

that's very interesting, I hadn't considered that. I am running a 9800X3D on my NVIDIA rig with an AM5 motherboard (ASUS B850M-PLUS)

[matte-schwartz]

I grabbed a gpu-trace capture after the issue occurred, and the results are... odd. It looks like some of the game's threads stop running while all the audio threads continue. The obvious gap is where I experienced the freeze:

gpu-trace: https://app.filen.io/#/d/7a48bce5-7821-4e67-b3c1-208602aa6bb1%23f3PN4KX887TbdN04Vz0cs9m2E8ZM7Jms, use https://github.com/mikesart/gpuvis to view

[Arulan]

I grabbed a gpu-trace capture after the issue occurred, and the results are... odd. It looks like some of the game's threads stop running while all the audio threads continue. The obvious gap is where I experienced the freeze:

gpu-trace: https://app.filen.io/#/d/7a48bce5-7821-4e67-b3c1-208602aa6bb1%23f3PN4KX887TbdN04Vz0cs9m2E8ZM7Jms, use https://github.com/mikesart/gpuvis to view

That describes the issue exactly. Audio always continues for me.

For what it's worth, I'm also on a 9800x3D (MSI X870 Tomahawk).

[SimpleHeuristics]

So since Bazzite testing updated to 575.64 I enabled the smooth motion feature for Clair Obscur since that game doesn't have frame Gen support.

The game now doesn't do the random visual hang described here.

I haven't tested it with smooth motion off yet.

[matte-schwartz]

Interesting find. 575.64 makes no difference here on its own, but I've yet to experience a freeze if I enable smooth motion.

Maybe will help nvidia track down the issue?

[SimpleHeuristics]

Interesting find. 575.64 makes no difference here on its own, but I've yet to experience a freeze if I enable smooth motion.

Maybe will help nvidia track down the issue?

At first I was wondering if it was GPU load related thing but it doesn't seem to be. I had the game locked at 60FPS for consistent frame timing for parries etc. and it would do the freezing. With smooth motion it just bumps it to a consistent 120 that's displayed with the same 60FPS base framerate and GPU load and no freezes with that.

[Arulan]

Interesting. I wonder if some experimenting with DXVK_NVAPI logging/flags could yield something. I've tried to set DXVK_NVAPI_GPU_ARCH to Ada (AD100), but that didn't seem to do anything.

https://github.com/jp7677/dxvk-nvapi/blob/master/README.md

[matte-schwartz]

None of the NVAPI settings seem to make a difference here. I'm fairly certain the reason NvPresent avoids the freeze is because of the second swapchain it creates alongside the primary game swapchain.