New display, occasionally turns black briefly, and has rgb static in varying densities (noticible on dark screens)
I just got a new Machine, one of the 13" AMDs.
This behavior that I’m seeing is super weird,
occasionally, the screen will just turn off (for less than one second)
always, there is rgb static – it’s not as noticible when the OS is fully booted after maybe 30s(?), but during boot (and after login) it looks real bad
However!, when I was converting the video using HandBrake for upload, I noticed the rgb static get real bad again while the conversion was going on, and then it went back to “subtle” when the conversion was done – so this effect seems to be related to the amount of work the cpu is doing?
I’d tried re-seating the display cable connection, and it seems to have made no difference.
Could this be a driver or firmware issue? I did transplant my storage/OS drive from an Intel machine (11th gen) into this AMD machine.
How do I debug this to see which thing could be the problem?
So for, my options are:
firmware
driver
cpu (internal gpu issue)
display problem
(potentially) goofy cable
But the fact the static gets goofier when under load kind of eliminates display / cable issues, right?
Here is a video of the effect in action during a reboot:
There’s some trigger phrases that get automatically rejected, though I thought that was mostly around / proc / cpuinfo or something like that.
I thought it might be a hardware issue since you mentioned it happens mostly at boot but it looks like it’s only after the bootloader takes over, so could very well be a driver issue. I would try memtest or make sure firmware and drivers are correct?
I missed the chance to change my boot situation, but during this boot I noticed some interesting messages printed,
and while looking for those logs, i found more interesting information, unsure if relevant:
from journalctl -b
Nov 10 00:19:00 hephaestus firefox_firefox.desktop[13351]: [GFX1-]: Couldn't sanitize RENDERER device: GFX1103_R1
Nov 10 00:19:00 hephaestus ubuntu-report[3283]: level=error msg="data were not delivered successfully to metrics server, r>
but here we go, in the logs for dmesg (slash var slash log slash dmesg (typing it out blocks my post) ),
this is what I saw during boot:
Not a direct assist unfortunately, but it CAN work great. I have run 22.04 since day one of my Batch 2… shipped with 3.02 BIOS and that was quite problematic. Not the same as yours, but definitely not a great experience. I installed the OEM kernel and BIOS 3.03 when it came out and since then it’s been smooth sailing. Zero issues, great speed and just a nice laptop to work with,
You may want to review Framework’s guides on Ubuntu setup, there are some “gotchas” specific to the AMD systems. I’m not sure if these would be the cause of your specific issue but the official documentation is always a great place to start.
has anyone ran in to my core issue? I have RGB static on my display when my CPU is working?
I currently have this situation:
Kernel 6.5.0-10-generic
Ubuntu 23.10
BIOS 3.03
I’ve not tried a fresh install yet – usually a very very last resort. But I can give that a go next week. Until then, all I can do is debug and troubleshoot
Update: new issue in addition to the static: my backlight just gave up on me… which i know because a flashlight on the screen allowed me to save my work. Rebooting turned the back light on tho.
Oh! So this probably means the brief turn offs i’ve been seeing are the backlight! Not the actual screen!
I have not, been trying to determine if it is a software issue – which I’ve felt like I maybe need kernel 6.6 to really be sure, but idk.
I’ll open a ticket with a link to this thread and see what happens!
I’m presently not convinced it’s not a software issue.
Last night, I “suspended” my laptop, but left the lid open – at some point in the night the fan went full blast, backlight turned on, and the screen was just black with frozen rgb static (still mostly black screen tho)
I had RGB static similar to what you have, after I upgraded my mainboard from Intel 13th gen to AMD 7640U. In my case, disconnecting and reconnecting the display cable to the mainboard fixed it. I see you already tried that, though, so I have no other suggestions.
At any rate, I would think this isn’t a software issue (i.e. it’s not an issue with the distro or the kernel or the display drivers), but instead a hardware issue.
so this is weird – I finally made an install USB to try re-installing and the computer found my boot disk, and booted as normal!
very puzzling, tho I’m thankful I still have a successful boot. I’m going to try the “repair mode” on ubuntu’s install media if that exists tho… since the way i got to 23.10 is quite goofy.