Linux Gaming @lemmy.world sosodev @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

Mixed refresh rates question

Hello everyone. I've read some posts before about Linux behaving poorly when using multiple monitors that have a different refresh rate.

Does anybody here know if X11 + AMDGPU + Mesa + Gnome handles this correctly? I'm thinking of getting a high refresh rate monitor (120hz+) while keeping my secondary at 60hz.

15 comments

When I was on X11 (kde), my 144hz monitor would frequently feel like it was operating at 60hz but I could never figure out what the cause was. I used to turn off my 60hz monitor before gaming as a workaround. I quickly switched to wayland and haven't had to deal with it since.
- I have a 144Hz between a 60 Hz and a 75 Hz monitor.
  
  It's not perfect, but does the job decently. In your ~/.profile:
  
  export KWIN_X11_REFRESH_RATE=144000 export KWIN_X11_NO_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1 export KWIN_X11_FORCE_SOFTWARE_VSYNC=1
  
  If you enable TearFree, it makes the lack of proper vsync less noticeable and fixes the tearing caused by software vsync.
  
  OP's probably SoL for Gnome though, because Gnome.
Only Wayland correctly supports multiple refresh rates. If you use to refresh rates on X11, it will refresh the screen at the highest rate. This is likely to cause tearing on the lower refresh rate screen.
If you don't have to put up with Nvidia and there's nothing tying you to X11 I recommend making the jump to Wayland, a lot of these sorts of issues have been solved over there
- I've tried wayland but it seems like games often don't work :(
  
  I haven't had any problems with gaming in Wayland. Perhaps you haven't configured it properly, especially if it wasn't default installed on your system.
  
  What DE and distro did you try Wayland with? All games should work as they did on X11.
I have that stack except in KDE and I have had no issues.
- Yeah, already a KDE user I've got a 4k@120 and a 4@60 and never noticed any issues in Linux.
  
  Ironically, where I do often see issues is in Windows when gaming with a headset (headset is fine, monitor shows extensive tearing, same rig).
Right now, you can use xorg or wayland with multiple monitors and different refresh rates without problems. What is really the problem, at least for me, it is the VRR( variable refresh rate) like freesync. If one of your monitor has it, and you need it while playing, for xorg with gnome you must have to turn off the other monitors, while with wayland the patch for it it's not merged yet.
Personally I have never had issues with my monitors having different refresh rates, at least not while using Gnome. Maybe it is more of a X11 KDE issue.

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