Wayland completely refusing to run on NVIDIA above 60hz

[wooden jacinth]

I've been having this issue where whenever I try to start a Wayland session it just refuses to run or do anything if my display settings are set to above 60hz. I know Wayland support is a bit dodgy with NVIDIA cards but this just refuses to work entirely, and anytime I do try to sign into a Wayland session it just flashes artifacts and digital garbage until I Ctrl-Alt-F3 into a TTY. I've had this issue on CachyOS and on vanilla Arch, primarily on KDE Plasma, but I also tried Hyprland, which is where I found out that if I set my display settings to my monitor's max refresh rate it just crashes, but it was working fine on the default setting of 60 hz.

I'm on a 4090 with an 5800X3D, I'm on the latest NVIDIA proprietary drivers, I'm on the zen kernel, using systemd, I'm running at 3840x2160@165 on an Odyssey Ark with HDMI 2.1 (I can't use DP), and I'm using KDE and SDDM.

I tried: nvidia-drm.modeset=1 fbdev=1, /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf, downgrading my NVIDIA drivers (550), switching kernels (I tried LTS and Zen with DKMS drivers and that didn't change anything), disabling G-SYNC, reinstalling Arch/Cachy (This is an issue happening on fresh installs so idk why I thought this would help), enabling ForceCompositionPipeline, and I haven't tried refresh rates other than 165, but I don't think that would change much of anything. Please help. I've been pulling my hair out on this for a bit now.

I just tried switching to 120hz on Wayland and it stopped receiving output until it switched back

[winter spindle]

Have you some logs of your drivers?
What desktop environment do you use?

[wooden jacinth]

Plasma

I can get logs, what do you want me to do

[winter spindle]

Can you give here these logs :
journalctl -b | grep -iE "nvidia|drm|kwin|wayland"
dmesg | grep -iE "nvidia|drm|hdmi"

And some config :

cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
grep "^MODULES" /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

[wooden jacinth]

for the first 2

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf
options nvidia_drm modeset=1
options nvidia_drm fbdev=1

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ grep "^MODULES" /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)

[winter spindle]

Are you running open or closed nvidia drivers?

[wooden jacinth]

Closed

[winter spindle]

Can you run pacman -Qs egl-wayland please?

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ pacman -Qs egl-wayland
local/egl-wayland 4:1.1.21-1
EGLStream-based Wayland external platform
local/egl-wayland2 1.0.0.rc.r57.g1893c37-1
EGLStream-based Wayland external platform (2)

[winter spindle]

You're running 590.X nvidia drivers?

[wooden jacinth]

Yea

[winter spindle]

Weird

What the actual issue you encounter saying "wayland doesn't work"?

[wooden jacinth]

Whenever I launch a Wayland session, I tried Plasma and Hyprland, if it launches above 60hz or if I set the display settings to above 60hz it just flashes digital garbage on the upper half of my screen and it just has whatever the last display buffer is under it

I can get into a TTY from that point

I just have no idea if it's a hardware or software issue. Part of me is telling me its a bandwidth issue to some extent but it doesn't do this at all on X11

And I've never had such an issue on other OSes

[winter spindle]

Ok.
Can you run :

cat /sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/status
cat /sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/modes | head -20
``` please?

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ cat /sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/status
cat /sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/modes | head -20
connected
3840x2160
3840x2160
3840x2160
3840x2160
2560x1440
2560x1440
1920x1080
1920x1080
1680x1050
1600x900
1280x1024
1280x1024
1440x900
1280x800
1152x864
1280x720
1280x720
1024x768
1024x768
1024x768

[winter spindle]

Uh, there is a possible issue there.
Can you run : ```nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode
xrandr --verbose | grep -A5 "HDMI"

please?

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ nvidia-settings -q CurrentMetaMode
xrandr --verbose | grep -A5 "HDMI"

Attribute 'CurrentMetaMode' (kevinjr:0.0): id=50, switchable=no, source=nv-control :: DPY-0: 3840x2160_165
@3840x2160 +0+0 {ViewPortIn=3840x2160, ViewPortOut=3840x2160+0+0}

HDMI-0 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 (0x236) normal (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 1210mm x 680mm
Identifier: 0x1bc
Timestamp: 201065
Subpixel: unknown
Gamma: 1.0:1.0:1.0
Brightness: 1.0

    ConnectorType: HDMI 
    ConnectorNumber: 3 
    _ConnectorLocation: 3 
    non-desktop: 0 
            supported: 0, 1

3840x2160 (0x1bd) 594.000MHz +HSync +VSync +preferred

[wooden jacinth]

What's up

[winter spindle]

Your NVIDIA drivers see 4K@165hz, but your kernel see only 4K@60Hz

[wooden jacinth]

Oh

But if that's the case then why does X11 work

[winter spindle]

Can you run ```cat /sys/class/drm/card1-HDMI-A-1/edid | edid-decode

[winter spindle]

NVIDIA's proprietary X11 driver ignores EDID limits and pushes 165Hz anyway. The kernel DRM (used by Wayland) respects the EDID and refuses to set modes beyond what's advertised.

[wooden jacinth]

Oh alright

[winter spindle]

Edit /etc/default/grub and add :

And try with 120Hz on Wayland?

[wooden jacinth]

I'm using systemd, not grub

Or does that still change something

I'll try anyway. hold on

[winter spindle]

If you use systemd, it's /boot/loader/entries/*.conf.
Find options line and replace with options root=PARTUUID=907c18ec-f22a-4402-a65e-beb63f31cbc9 zswap.enabled=0 rw rootfstype=ext4 nvidia-drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1 video=HDMI-A-1:3840x2160@165

[wooden jacinth]

Didnt work

Same thing happened

[winter spindle]

Can you run kscreen-doctor -o please?

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ kscreen-doctor -o
Output: 1 HDMI-A-1 0344202f-f389-4d1c-881f-d94daef3f95e
enabled
connected
priority 1
HDMI
replication source:0
Modes: 1:3840x2160@60.00*! 2:3840x2160@59.94 3:3840x2160@29.97 4:2560x1440@120.00 5:2560x1440@59.95 6:1920x1080@119.88 7:1920x1080@59.94 8:1680x1050@59.95 9:1600x900@60.00 10:1280x1024@75.03 11:1280x1024@60.02 12:1440x900@59.89 13:1280x800@59.81 14:1152x864@75.00 15:1280x720@60.00 16:1280x720@59.94 17:1024x768@75.03 18:1024x768@70.07 19:1024x768@60.00 20:800x600@75.00 21:800x600@72.19 22:800x600@60.32 23:720x480@59.94 24:640x480@75.00 25:640x480@59.94
Geometry: 0,0 3840x2160
Scale: 1
Rotation: 1
Overscan: 0
Vrr: Automatic
RgbRange: unknown
HDR: disabled
Wide Color Gamut: disabled
ICC profile: none
Color profile source: sRGB
Color power preference: prefer efficiency and performance
Brightness control: supported, set to 100% and dimming to 100%
Color resolution: unknown
Allow EDR: unsupported
Sharpness control: unsupported

[winter spindle]

try kscreen-doctor output.1.mode.4

[wooden jacinth]

[kevinjr@kevinjr ~]$ kscreen-doctor output.1.mode.4
kscreen.doctor: Taddaaa! Found mode "4" "2560x1440@120"
kscreen.doctor: Output 1 set mode "4"

That worked

[winter spindle]

uh

nice

seems to be a cable issue

[wooden jacinth]

what makes you say that?

[winter spindle]

you can run 1440p but not 2160p. What version of HDMI is your cable of your screen?

[wooden jacinth]

Uhh let me check.

2.0. I think it is a bandwidth issue

You're right I think

I didn't buy this cable though. I have another one I can try

[winter spindle]

Yeah.

[wooden jacinth]

Let me look for it

[winter spindle]

It's a bandwidth issue. You have 18Gbps of bandwidth instead of 48Gbps with 2.1.

[wooden jacinth]

It's fixed

You're a lifesaver. Thank you

[winter spindle]

No problem, you're welcome. :)

Don't forget to switch to "Solved" the thread ;)

[wise delta]

you cant use 2.1 on linux for... reasons

sounds weird, but can you use DisplayPort instead?

if you monitor doesnt support it, get a display-port cable with one hdmi end on it

only thing that matters is that the end inserted into the GPU is DisplayPort, other end of the cable can be HDMI if need be

[wise delta]

the HDMI-forum doesnt allow the special HDMI-2.1 drivers on linux, so were stuck with HDMI-2.0, DisplayPort, or DisplayPort to HDMI adapters/cables

dont ask me why the latter one works, its a mystery

[winter spindle]

You run open nvidia drivers?

[wise delta]

No, I'm on amd

What I said is independent of gpu drivers or anything else

[winter spindle]

I didn't have any issue 🤔