Vulkan (amdgpu) breaks after random time of playing on newer kernels

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Delofon

Jan 22 @ 5:50pm

Vulkan (amdgpu) breaks after random time of playing on newer kernels

so start up any game that uses Vulkan (either natively or through DXVK) and after X amount of time (could be a few hours or even literal seconds) video output freezes (audio keeps playing normally) and game stops responding to any input (except, well, SIGKILL).
This leaves a lasting impact on the running system, however: try launching any game (or damn even vkcube) after that and they all just open in a blank window.
This impacts *only* Vulkan - OpenGL is fine. (which I guess is why my desktop and glxgears show no problems).

Out of multiple kernels tested - 6.17.8 (manually built), 6.18.6-zen (arch), 6.12.6x (some lts kernel from arch), 6.6.119 (manually built) - only 6.6.119 works without issues.

GPU is AMD Radeon 6700 XT if that matters.
since people asked, distribution is Arch, mesa+vulkan-radeon are 25.3.3, Xorg is 21.1.21

Worst offenders so far:

Elden Ring - sometimes this happens even before main menu fully loads
Doom The Dark Ages - usually survives for 1-2 hours

so my questions are:

is this a tracked issue? (if it's not might need to start bisecting)
is there a known fix besides using 6.6.119+?

Last edited by Delofon; Jan 24 @ 3:36pm

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Showing 1-15 of 26 comments

[GNU] Debian ☭ has Steam for Linux

Jan 22 @ 5:55pm

Debian Sid, 6.18.6 compiled by myself; Mesa 25.3.3; vulkan works on Path of Exile 2, via proton, and also Dota 2, linux native!

AMD 7900xtx by Asus (GPU)

PS: I've been using vulkan whenever I can choose vulkan! Since a long time ago...

Last edited by [GNU] Debian ☭; Jan 22 @ 5:58pm

Leon LaGrey has Steam for Linux

Jan 22 @ 7:17pm

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
Debian Sid, 6.18.6 compiled by myself; Mesa 25.3.3; vulkan works on Path of Exile 2, via proton, and also Dota 2, linux native!

AMD 7900xtx by Asus (GPU)

PS: I've been using vulkan whenever I can choose vulkan! Since a long time ago...

It is incredible! That's what I always do is run Vulkon, its works for 97% of the games, I'm happy with most of the games I run!

Jinrum

Jan 22 @ 10:56pm

Originally posted by Yoth:
9070 XT and no issues with Vulkan. Played about 6h in the last 2 days. I do however experience frame buffer corruption on standby and permanent screen freezes (a.k.a. page flip time out) when playing videos in VLC or Firefox. All these issues disappear once I downgrade to 6.17. AMD really borked the drivers because literally every GPU available (especially older ones) have new issues since 6.18.

When you say standby are you talking about Suspend / Sleep?

Jancsi

Jan 23 @ 3:29am

Try to use your cards firmware from 6.6 in 6.17.

tyl0413

Jan 23 @ 3:57am

I disabled my iGPU (wanted to offload 2GB idle VRAM waste of the system) bc I was getting random crashes and logs showed amdgpu, genuinely thought it was an Nvidia issue.
"Nvidia is unusable AMD is best flawless for Linux" my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass.

[GNU] Debian ☭ has Steam for Linux

Jan 23 @ 5:55am

Originally posted by Yoth:
9070 XT and no issues with Vulkan. Played about 6h in the last 2 days. I do however experience frame buffer corruption on standby and permanent screen freezes (a.k.a. page flip time out) when playing videos in VLC or Firefox. All these issues disappear once I downgrade to 6.17. AMD really borked the drivers because literally every GPU available (especially older ones) have new issues since 6.18.

i mostly use mplayer/SMplayer... but tested with VLC; Rush blu-ray on nvme, and no problem at all... and did this while playin Path of Exiled2 (actually PoE2 was only opened in the hideout/AFK)
Linux DuMal 6.18.6 (not real time/i use preempt-dynamic)
Mesa 25.3.3-1
firmware-amd-graphics/unstable,unstable,now 20251111-1

i guess that's it...
Debian sid; updated every single day

[GNU] Debian ☭ has Steam for Linux

Jan 23 @ 7:01am

Originally posted by tyl0413:
I disabled my iGPU (wanted to offload 2GB idle VRAM waste of the system) bc I was getting random crashes and logs showed amdgpu, genuinely thought it was an Nvidia issue.
"Nvidia is unusable AMD is best flawless for Linux" my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass.

are you a Nvidia fanboy??? It is NOT AMD's fault; it is a distro problem!

tyl0413

Jan 23 @ 9:40am

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
Originally posted by tyl0413:
I disabled my iGPU (wanted to offload 2GB idle VRAM waste of the system) bc I was getting random crashes and logs showed amdgpu, genuinely thought it was an Nvidia issue.
"Nvidia is unusable AMD is best flawless for Linux" my ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ass.

are you a Nvidia fanboy??? It is NOT AMD's fault; it is a distro problem!

Yeah okay but if something goes wrong with nvidia its always an nvidia problem and never anything else correct? Thats how that works and there are no AMD fanboys either, especially not in linux spaces.

Jinrum

Jan 23 @ 11:17am

Originally posted by Yoth:
Originally posted by Jinrum:
When you say standby are you talking about Suspend / Sleep?
Yes. I put the computer to sleep and when it comes back there are 10 small (roughly 3x10 pixels) black rectangles randomly spread across the screen. They disappear once the frame buffer is repainted. I reported this to AMD but I didn't have time to bisect this to find the offending commit.

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
i mostly use mplayer/SMplayer... but tested with VLC; Rush blu-ray on nvme, and no problem at all...
Happens randomly every 10-20 hours of playback. Lots of paused Youtube videos in tabs might also contribute to the issue. Had this 3 times total since Kernel 6.18 released but never on 6.17 or lower.

Originally posted by Delofon:
Out of multiple kernels tested - 6.17.8 (manually built), 6.18.6-zen (arch), 6.12.6x (some lts kernel from arch), 6.6.119 (manually built) - only 6.6.119 works without issues.
Which mesa and vulkan-radeon version do you have? Or do you use amdvlk?

That might explain why I don't see some of these issues since I disable suspend / sleep. I set my computer to just blank the monitor after like 5min of inactivity.

Last edited by Jinrum; Jan 23 @ 11:18am

Xenophobe

Jan 23 @ 1:11pm

I'm not seeing this issue on linux mint using distro provided kernel 6.14.0-37, kisak mesa 25.3.3, with an RX 6950 XT, on an X11 session. What distro, mesa version, X11/Wayland session are you using?

#10

Delofon

Jan 23 @ 1:14pm

not at the machine right now; will get back to this when I'm able to

Originally posted by Yoth:
Which mesa and vulkan-radeon version do you have? Or do you use amdvlk?

amdvlk is discontinued; mesa and vulkan-radeon is whatever is the latest on arch as of right now, but this issue doesn't seem to be tied to them.

Originally posted by Jancsi:
Try to use your cards firmware from 6.6 in 6.17.

noted, will do

#11

[GNU] Debian ☭ has Steam for Linux

Jan 24 @ 1:42pm

Will these things fix the problems for all of you having those?

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-Linux-6.19-Regressions

Last edited by [GNU] Debian ☭; Jan 24 @ 1:42pm

#12

Delofon

Jan 24 @ 3:59pm

Originally posted by Yoth:
Which mesa and vulkan-radeon version do you have? Or do you use amdvlk?

Originally posted by Xenophobe:
I'm not seeing this issue on linux mint using distro provided kernel 6.14.0-37, kisak mesa 25.3.3, with an RX 6950 XT, on an X11 session. What distro, mesa version, X11/Wayland session are you using?

I've updated the post with relevant information.

Originally posted by Jancsi:
Try to use your cards firmware from 6.6 in 6.17.

...wait, isn't firmware provided by the linux-firmware repo/package? I didn't fiddle with linux-firmware when downgrading to 6.6.119. (or did you mean something else...)

Originally posted by GNU Debian ☭:
Will these things fix the problems for all of you having those?

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-Linux-6.19-Regressions

Interesting enough this vulkan breakage isn't among the ones listed. I will wait until tomorrow for rc7 to test this out.

#13

Delofon

Jan 24 @ 4:01pm

Also, indeed looks like this issue was not tracked before. If rc7 and/or linux firmware thing don't fix this, expect to see me on freedesktop issue tracker soon...

#14