Different way of handling "Always" Variable Refresh Rate

Brainstorm
,
1

Hi everyone, and first of all, thank you for your work on KDE

I’ve recently switched to it for a bit because of its robust VRR experience, but I have run into an experience that could be improved.

The Situation

I first tried running the “Automatic” VRR mode, which works fine, but causes my screen to blank out for about a second whenever I switch between a fullscreen application and the desktop, making quickly looking something up while gaming or watching a full-screen video rather annoying.

I then tried the “Always” mode, which removes this annoyance, but has its own problems. When inactive the framerate drops to my monitors lowest refresh rate and rises back up again every time I interact with the PC. This constant switching between around 40hz and 175hz then feels like stuttering, and I would much rather have a constant 175hz (or hell, 120hz) framerate when on the desktop.

The Improvement

Windows seems to solve this by always having VRR enabled (solving the first problem) but only allowing an application to control the framerate when it is running full-screen (solving the second problem).

I would really love to have something like that available as an additional mode.

My Setup

  • A FreeSync Premium Pro display
  • An AMD RX 7900xtx
  • Kubuntu 24.04 with plasma-workspace-wayland installed

Notes

  • NVIDIA cards also have this noticeable blank-out (even worse) when switching to full-screen. This, I think, is caused by incompatibilities with FreeSync and also happens on Windows, and is not what I am referring to here.
  • I assume Kubuntu does not have the newest version of KDE, so maybe this problem has already been fixed, which would make me very happy. I’m planning on switching distro anyhow, I just wanted to start with something officially supported by Steam while porting my gaming rig :sweat_smile:
2

At the risk of necro-ing with my first ever post, I did look for a thread life but didn’t find one (sorry if I’ve messed up), this is exactly the same issue I’m experiencing and I second the proposed solution.

In my case I noticed it with Steam’s friends animations causing the refresh rate to fluctuate between 48 and 120hz with several steps in between when Adaptive Sync is set to Always. When nothing is happening on the screen it stabilises at 48 (the minimum freesync value) and if I move the mouse around it sits at 120hz.

The way that Automatic Adaptive Sync detects programs appears to work fine and the Variable Refresh Rate functionality is fine, it’s just the way it interacts with the desktop or, in Automatic mode black screens whenever fullscreen is toggled.

My System
Samsung QN90C 43-inch (Freesync Premium)
AMD RX 7800X
Fedora 40 (KDE Plasma 6.2)

3

I’ve met the same problem and I also second the proposed solution.

My System
Operating System: Arch Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.12.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.13.7-zen1-1.1-zen (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 12 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-12490F
Memory: 15.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon RX 6600 LE
Manufacturer: Micro-Star International Co., Ltd.
Product Name: MS-7E44
System Version: 1.0

4

The “screen to blank out for about a second” situation is issued here of amdgpu (the driver): gitlab dot freedesktop dot org/drm/amd/-/issues/4046

5

Met the same problem and add one to supporting the proposed solution !

6

There is also this bug/request thread related to this issue: 477016 – Brightness flicker with adaptive sync