Anyone else noticing Serious Slow Down / Stuttering in games if they update to the latest Stable Kernel

Issues & Assistance
41

CachyOS kernel downgrade, fish shell version

Kernel sources for DKMS = linux-cachyos-headers

set TARGET_VER “7.0.11-1”
set TARGET_KREL “7.0.11-1-cachyos”
set ARCH_SUFFIX “x86_64_v3”
set REPO " Nginx Directory "

Check current kernel stack

uname -r
pacman -Q linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers linux-cachyos-nvidia-open

Optional safety snapshot

sudo snapper create --description “Before kernel downgrade to $TARGET_VER”

Try installing from local pacman cache first

sudo pacman -U
/var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux-cachyos-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
/var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux-cachyos-headers-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
/var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux-cachyos-nvidia-open-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst

If the cache install failed because files were missing, download them

mkdir -p ~/kernel-downgrade-$TARGET_VER
cd ~/kernel-downgrade-$TARGET_VER

curl -LO $REPO/linux-cachyos-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
curl -LO $REPO/linux-cachyos-headers-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
curl -LO $REPO/linux-cachyos-nvidia-open-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst

sudo pacman -U
linux-cachyos-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
linux-cachyos-headers-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst
linux-cachyos-nvidia-open-$TARGET_VER-$ARCH_SUFFIX.pkg.tar.zst

Verify kernel, headers, and NVIDIA module match

pacman -Q linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers linux-cachyos-nvidia-open
ls /usr/lib/modules/ | grep $TARGET_KREL

Rebuild DKMS for the downgraded kernel

sudo dkms autoinstall -k $TARGET_KREL
sudo depmod -a $TARGET_KREL
dkms status

Regenerate CachyOS/Limine boot files

sudo limine-mkinitcpio

Exclude the kernel stack from future updates

sudo sed -i ‘/^IgnorePkg[[:space:]]*=/d’ /etc/pacman.conf
sudo sed -i ‘/^[options]/a IgnorePkg = linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers linux-cachyos-nvidia-open’ /etc/pacman.conf

Verify IgnorePkg is under [options], before [multilib]

grep -n -E ‘^[options]|^IgnorePkg|^[multilib]’ /etc/pacman.conf

Final checks before reboot

pacman -Q linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers linux-cachyos-nvidia-open
dkms status
ls /usr/lib/modules/ | grep $TARGET_KREL

Reboot

sudo reboot

After reboot, verify

uname -r
pacman -Q linux-cachyos linux-cachyos-headers linux-cachyos-nvidia-open
dkms status
nvidia-smi

EDIT: I am using my PC for work so I will not experiment downgrading only the kernel, and Linux is not Windows, the kernel and drivers most times go hand in hand, plus if I downgraded the drivers makes sense to me to downgrade libs using it for stability.

42

which kernel are you using?

43

image

7.0.12-1

44

I couldnt find the Kernel there.
But I was able to find it at a mirror.

45

Just quick update, this whole 2 day, i’ve been testing with all latest version (so no downgrade) playing many different games, sofar only got 1 crash (tho it caused by me checking out HDR tbh), i’ll keep testing with all the latest version :ok_hand:

Just do note, im mostly capping my fps to 60 (if i use lsfg-vk) or 120 if pure raw, + 1440p UW, sofar didnt notice any slow down or stuttering

46

I’m not sure if this is related or not, as I have not really noticed any slowdown or stuttering, but RetroArch has stopped working for me (crashes with the error “buffer overflow” whenever I try to load any game in any emulator core). This is affecting two different computers with different hardware configurations, both running NVIDIA cards, though.

Rolling back to my earliest available snapshot (June 19) seems to have resolved that issue, so it was probably caused by an update that happened sometime after that date. That puts me at Linux 7.0.12-1-cachyos.

Another possible culprit for my issues could be a plasma update, I suppose. I tried booting into the LTS kernel, and that didn’t solve anything.

EDIT:
Nevermind, my issue is this: [Bug]: RetroArch 1.22.2-4.1 x86_64_v3 crashes when launching content from History and Playlists · Issue #1545 · CachyOS/CachyOS-PKGBUILDS · GitHub It was related to an update, but specifically the retroarch package.

47

Mhh, so you’re saying if I update, I may not face the issues described here? I’ve been holding off just in case (tho tbh I could just snapshot back if it’s messy…).

48

technically yes you can, and we just got new

mesa
kernel

just now, i heard in other thread it was fixing some issue, i just want to check this too, but since it’s weekdays… can’t expect playing games a whole day :melting_face:

49

Glad I found this. Was going crazy trying to troubleshoot camera panning stuttering in Crimson Desert. Driving me crazy and not preset. In older kernels. So I guess we wait.

50

I’m having a similar issue in Age of Empires 4 which only occurs when I use the mouse to pan the screen around (stuttering without any kind of frame drop shown on Mangohud). Panning the camera with the keyboard however doesn’t create any kind of stutter. I thought it might have to do with wayland and screen edge/mouse interaction. Using an Nvidia card myself and on Kernel 6.18.5-2-cachyos.

51

You’re on Nvidia. How is mesa relevant? Drop in performance is almost certainly because of the 610 driver. It’s a known issue, a disaster and it’s not even Linux specific. 610 is causing a serious regression in performance on both Linux and Windows. Ironic, considering it was supposed to improve the performance by removing the power cap that was set too low with 595 version IIRC.

52

There are people who downgraded their drivers to 595 and it didn’t fix anything. Downgrading mesa / kernel, while keeping 610, fixed it though. Meaning the driver is an unlikely culprit, esp. since 610 was deployed long before the issues in this thread were reported (those were reported only after the kernel update).

If 610 is causing issues (which is possible, there have been complaints), it wouldn’t appear to be the ones discussed here I presume? ^^

53

Honestly I took the whole stack anything GPU related and downgraded it to June 10 state regardless if mesa or not, was not taking chances. Would not be the first time mesa messes up things completely on a Linux OS, it has a long history of doing this both AMD and nvidia.

Remember libglvnd?

54

Fair enough, however the drop in performance is caused by the 610 driver, so if that was your main concern, there was no reason to downgrade everything. I have 4080 and everything works great, aside from the performance penalty. Because I don’t currently time for games I’ll probably just wait to see if the issue is gong to get resolve relatively quickly (Windows users are affected as well), otherwise I’ll switch to 580xx, which is anyway the best choice for people with 30 and 40 series GPUs.

Edit:

Btw with “everything” I meant generally. Various issues introduced with 590, 595 are still here in one form or another. E.g. 595 fixed RT issues in a handful of games that were affected by 590 regressions, only to introduce identical issues in games that have previously worked with 590. In this regard 610 basically has done the same, fixed some issues in some popular games, caused regressions in other games or left them unresolved. What’s funny is that 610 was supposed to improve performance by allowing higher voltages that were accidentally capped in 595.

55

Hey :slight_smile:

I’m told there’s a new mesa around! I just wondered if you updated and if it helped, esp. since we play the same games I figure :stuck_out_tongue:

56

Just a heads up, with everything updated, ofc included mesa as well
today i’ve tested playing a whole days (more than 12h i think, ocassionally break, only for lunch / dinner)

the game i’ve tested (from lighter game and to heavier game) sofar i don’t see any slow down / stuttering (on my end, 9070 XT)

game list i played today :

waydroid
Limbus Company
Arknight Endfield (vulkan)
Forza Horizon 6
The Forever Winter

just note, working fine on my system is not always will be same experiences in your system
so, if you want to try it, always make a snapshot backup, so you can revert it easily later on, in case it’s still broken :ok_hand:

57

Can also try the RC kernel. Been great for me (all my 7.1 issues solved) and plus I get proper hdmi 2.1 support now for my Dell 4k 120hz oled :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

58

Nope. Kernel 7.1.3-1 did not work, still getting those mini-freezes. (Tainted Grail)

Edit: Downgraded back to 7.0.12-1, no more issue for 3 hours straight.

59

how do you rollback with btfrs?

60

it’s been a while since I did it, I think you can do it without booting into the snapshot and just using btrfs assistant, not sure

check this and search the forum/web Btrfs Snapshots | CachyOS

on the machine that has the problem, I have ext4+timeshift

maybe timeshift is available for btrfs snapshot too