Nvidia Gamescope VRR (Monitor VRR reverting to max instead of staying in range) on Wayland

[jrgiacone]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Are you using any gamescope patches or a forked version of gamescope?

• The issue occurs on upstream gamescope without any modifications

Current Behavior

I am currently using Arch with Plasma on Wayland and Nvidia 565. Unsure if it is a gamescope issue or a nvidia driver issue. However, when using gamescope and turning on the monitors frame rate HUD to see the current refresh rate with a game like new world running in gamescope with HDR on and FPS in the 90-100 range the monitor will consistently jump to the max refreshrate. When gamescope is not used the monitor matches and stays within the 90-100 range without bouncing to max refresh rate.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Launch New world or any game with HDR with the following options: gamescope -W 3440 -H 1440 -r 165 --hdr-enabled --force-grab-cursor -f --mangoapp -- gamemoderun %command%
2. Turn on monitor HUD to see current refresh rate. I am using a aw3423DWF and a LG27gl83a-b and it is present on both.
3. While gaming play a game that keeps the FPS below the max monitor refresh rate, ideally 90-120 of 165 where you know it will not jump to 165. Watch as the monitor continually shoots past to max refresh rate while the fps does not dip below 90 or 60 on 1% lows.
4. Run the same test without gamescope and just gamemoderun '%command%' in steam and the issue is not present.

Hardware information

- Distro: Arch
- CPU: amd 5800x
- GPU: Nvidia 3080
- Driver Version: 565.57.01-2

Software information

- Desktop environment: KDE 6.2.3
- Session type: Wayland
- Gamescope version: 	3.15.14-1
- Gamescope launch command(s): `gamescope -W 3440 -H 1440 -r 165 --hdr-enabled --force-grab-cursor -f --mangoapp -- gamemoderun %command%`

Which gamescope backends have the issue you are reporting?

• Wayland (default for nested gamescope)
• DRM (default for embedded gamescope, i.e. gamescope-session)
• SDL
• OpenVR

Logging, screenshots, or anything else

No response

[matte-schwartz]

what about if you drop off the --mangoapp argument and just check your monitor's built-in refresh rate OSD?

there is a known issue within gamescope (and not GPU specific) where mangohud overlays can spike your monitor's refresh rate up to maximum in both the Wayland backend and the DRM backend, especially ~60% or below FPS of your monitor's true maximum refresh rate.

this can also be triggered by: a cursor, GamepadUI side menus, and toast notifications from Steam

[jrgiacone]

what about if you drop off the --mangoapp argument and just check your monitor's built-in refresh rate OSD?

there is a known issue within gamescope (and not GPU specific) where mangohud overlays can spike your monitor's refresh rate up to maximum in both the Wayland backend and the DRM backend, especially ~60% or below FPS of your monitor's true refresh rate

I will try removing mango app when I get in this evening! I don't think I noticed with global mango hud running via goverlay, but yea i used mangoapp to validate HDR was on

[jrgiacone]

what about if you drop off the --mangoapp argument and just check your monitor's built-in refresh rate OSD?

there is a known issue within gamescope (and not GPU specific) where mangohud overlays can spike your monitor's refresh rate up to maximum in both the Wayland backend and the DRM backend, especially ~60% or below FPS of your monitor's true maximum refresh rate.

this can also be triggered by: a cursor, GamepadUI side menus, and toast notifications from Steam

I've tried removing everything up to just gamescope -W 3440 -H 1440 -- gamemoderun %command% and it is the same issue. It is even notable just in the menu and I could record it to show. In the menu when launched with gamescope the VRR fluctuates from 80-165 when FPS are at 110.

When I just run gamemoderun %command% it holds at 104 as shown in the menu.

Would a series of videos showing it help?

[jrgiacone]

IMG_0.1.MOV

IMG_0.MOV

I've attached both videos we will see how they play, but in one you can clearly see the impact of gamescope

[matte-schwartz]

yeah it looks exactly the same issue as the gamescope DRM backend (gamescope-session), but with the DRM backend you can at least mitigate it.

I have an open bug report for it here if you want to leave a comment on it: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=493090

[ammuench]

Noticing a simliar issue running new Path of Exile game in gamescope on latest KDE on Arch. Happens in both Vulkan & DirectX12. Toggling mangohud off in the session seems to alleviate it, but using the OSD was still seeing some odd spikes here and there that made game performance appear laggy

[matte-schwartz]

@ammuench what GPU do you have? would be helpful to know more details about your own VRR issue as well.

[ammuench]

@ammuench what GPU do you have? would be helpful to know more details about your own VRR issue as well.

Using an NVIDIA 4070ti on latest Arch Drivers at time of writing (565.77-5)

[matte-schwartz]

Okay thanks for confirming. As noted above, I've seen the same issue with Quake II RTX in both Plasma 6 Wayland and Cosmic on a 7900XTX, so it's not a NVIDIA-specific issue. Previously I had only tested this behavior on Plasma which is why I filed that bug report I linked above, but clearly it can happen with other Wayland compositors as well so that was the wrong place to pursue this.

If you don't mind one more experiment, if you launch Steam embedded in gamescope from a TTY (like gamescope -e -h 1440 -w 3440 -r 175 --adaptive-sync -- steam -steamdeck for example) and check the same games, does the monitor similarly spike to maximum refresh rate or does it behave properly? Make sure to remove the gamescope launch option from within the game's settings so you don't run double gamescope, and keep mangohud off. When you're done, you can switch to a different TTY session and run gamescopectl shutdown to close gamescope/steam

[ammuench]

It may take me a couple days to sit down and try proper but I'll give it a go soon and report back

[njdom24]

I can confirm I'm seeing this issue on an AMD RX 5700 XT with the embedded (drm) via TTY, and nested (wayland, sdl) backends in SwayWM (which works well with VRR on its own).

[njdom24]

20241218_184141.mp4

FWIW, my monitor's FPS counter updates in realtime

[matte-schwartz]

@njdom24 you're confusing me now... where is this video clip from and with what launch commands are you using?

for now, lets keep the two backends separate imo. the issue as reported here should only be for the nested VRR issue and #1513 should be for situations where VRR spikes in the drm backend, unless I see some more convincing evidence that they are actually the exact same issue.

For example, I can reproduce this specific problematic VRR spiking behavior in Quake II RTX, Ghost of Tsushima, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle only while using gamescope nested on Plasma 6 Wayland and Cosmic desktop, while I cannot reproduce it in the drm backend unless I start messing with overlays, etc (which leads to #1513)

[njdom24]

@matte-schwartz Sorry. The clip is with the embedded backend with MANGOHUD=0 gamescope -e -O DP-1 -H 1440 -r 144 --adaptive-sync -- steam -tenfoot -pipewire-dmabuf -console -cef-force-gpu