I just installed Fedora 36 and I’ve been experiencing periodic stutters. This happens when moving to another workspace or a desktop animation occurs. The motion is not smooth, stutters, and occasionally freezes for a fraction of a second. This happens every second or so. When I’m typing, the cursor and my inputs seem to lag behind as well.
In Firefox scrolling also stutters and there is input lag. What’s odd is that fedora was working fine after 2 reboots then after that, the stutters and input lag return (I’ve reinstalled several times). I’ve also tried Ubuntu & Arch and the same happens.
Also to note, I’m using an external 4K monitor via usb-c. The issue persists even on the laptop’s built-in display.
Hardware/Software & Kernel:
Laptop with Intel 11th gen Iris Xe graphics (i7 - 1165 G7)
Kernel: 5.18.17
I’m using Wayland (xorg has the same issue)
What I’ve tried:
Installed the latest updates for fedora
Also Updated BIOS on laptop
I’ve checked to make sure I am using the latest intel drivers and that they are loaded
It seems that cpu usage is relatively high even though I’m just moving windows around.
Is it possible that the CPU is being used to render rather than the GPU, despite having the drivers installed/loaded?
What is strange is that after a fresh install everything is running smooth, no stutters/freezing or input lag. Only after a few reboots does the problem show up. Does anyone have an Idea of what could be the cause?
Output from glxinfo -B:
name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
Device: Mesa Intel(R) Xe Graphics (TGL GT2) (0x9a49)
Version: 22.1.6
Accelerated: yes
Video memory: 31883MB
Unified memory: yes
Preferred profile: core (0x1)
Max core profile version: 4.6
Max compat profile version: 4.6
Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.2
OpenGL vendor string: Intel
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 22.1.6
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 22.1.6
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 22.1.6
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
Is your laptop equipped with the dual GPU config?
Please post the output of inxi -Fzx
If it has an nvidia GPU and you have not installed the nvidia driver then the GPU will be dependent upon software rendering which can result in cpu overload and stuttering in display as you have described. The inxi output will tell us.
Unfortunately, I’ve decided to install PopOS just to see if that somehow resolves the problem. For now everything seems to be working. All animations are pretty smooth, no stutters or input lag. But I’m still a bit skeptical, I’m still using GNOME in PopOS so problems may resurface. Somehow I get the feeling that Iris Xe is unreliable on Linux…
Also thank you! and thanks for the reply @computersavvy! my laptop only has an integrated gpu, so no Nvidia graphics.
I’ll continue to post updates if anyone wants to know if this issue was resolved on Fedora, but because this is my main laptop I usually cannot spend a lot of time experimenting.
Glad to hear that you seem happy with PopOS, though how you can determine that in less than 20 hours is hard to understand.
You initially posted this thread 21 hours ago after a new install of fedora, I responded 13 hours ago, and now you have already removed fedora and installed PopOS. It seems you are really impatient and do not even allow time for a response to your original question before distro-hopping.
There is more to it than that. I have installed Fedora in the past and used extensively (I prefer it to Pop), distributions are great, but the tools/programs are what I need. PopOS seems to be behaving differently and so I am tentatively counting this as progress. But I don’t consider this a full solution.
Also It is true that I just installed fedora, but it was a re-installation. A re-install seems to fix the problem momentarily. I have been dealing with this problem for many weeks and have stuck with Fedora or Ubuntu. Thanks again for your time.
Thank you for the response. I don’t mean to be overly critical, but without the requested info we have no way to identify any potential causes. Responding with the asked-for info will give us some idea about how to assist.
I’d generally say this in response to the OP, it could be a missing or wrong video video driver, as @computersavvy already stated above, and in addition to that it might also have been some trouble related to Wayland running on the mesa-driver. So I would have tried logging in to gnome with X11, first thing. Either approach might have been easier, than reverting to Pop-OS (which I also like).
No worries all is good I have decided to give fedora another chance, the reason is because I really like PopOS but fedora has a standard Gnome desktop with no extra features. And that is what I’m looking for.
Here is the output from inxi -Fzx
(I shortened it a bit)
I also did this before the DE started to show stutters then used diff between what is shown below and that earlier file. They look the same.
This is fedora 36 running on Kernel 5.18.17
Of course the stutters are back at this point. But for a brief moment the system was working smoothly.
If you were to task the machine then run that again as inxi -CSGzxx it might tell us more about the issue.
At first glance it would seem that for some reason the cpu is limited in speed and running at an idle when it certainly seems that the specs should allow it to perform better.
Specs for that processer here show that the processor seems to be running at approximately half the
Configurable TDP-down Base Frequency
1.20 GHz
and that may imply that something in the bios config is limiting its capabilities.
Have you tried anything in the bios settings to reconfigure the cpu or memory speeds to match the specs or is everything simply default?
I think you’re on the right track. But strangely the stutters are gone, today I used the laptop, and at the outset I saw no stutters. To my knowledge I haven’t changed anything since the last reboot.
Also I put the cpu under load and it was able to increase frequency as is expected, at most it went up to ~4700.
I’m gonna try to reproduce the problem and post the output from inxi as you suggest.
Thank you all for the help! As it turns out, the stutters have returned randomly. I did a small test to see if cpu speeds change according to load and this is what I found:
So it seems the cpu is not ramping up to meet the demand and it could be a bottleneck? The BIOS is stock beyond changing: secure boot to off and battery charge limit to 60% But I’ll check again.
Thanks for the suggestion @vwbusguy I do hope it’s not a memory issue, If it is then maybe it’s a hardware problem? The ram in this case?
This is often configurable in the BIOS settings on machines that have integrated graphics. Increasing the memory allocated to your integrated graphics in BIOS might help with this.
@vwbusguy Just looked at the BIOS of this laptop and also looked around the web and it seems this option isn’t exposed for now. I’m on the latest BIOS update so hopefully in the future this option becomes available. Nevertheless thanks for the suggestion
Took some new readings just now with my machine under load:
It seems that the machine does not want to boost past 2800 Mhz or so, when there is no stutters it boosts well above that, reaching 4700 Mhz. Not sure what could be causing this.
I found the problem. It was a hardware issue. My laptop (framework-laptop) has expansion cards. When looking through forums I found a similar issue, that I too was having. If you’re in the BIOS and have a Display Port expansion card inserted, it freezes periodically. This happens even inside the OS whether that’s Windows or Linux. The solution is to remove the Display Port card. Stutters are gone for good.
I’m sure it can be fixed via a BIOS update. The rest of the laptop works very well. But I must admit I would of never thought that an expansion card would give this kind of trouble.
I’d like to thank you all for the help, I learned a little bit more about troubleshooting!