RTX 5090 often freezes presentation for 3-5 seconds in certain games

NVIDIA Open GPU Kernel Modules Version

570.123.18

Please confirm this issue does not happen with the proprietary driver (of the same version). This issue tracker is only for bugs specific to the open kernel driver.

• I confirm that this does not happen with the proprietary driver package.

Operating System and Version

CachyOS (Arch Linux)

Kernel Release

Linux blackwell 6.12.33-1-cachyos-lts #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 10 Jun 2025 14:43:36 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Please confirm you are running a stable release kernel (e.g. not a -rc). We do not accept bug reports for unreleased kernels.

• I am running on a stable kernel release.

Hardware: GPU

GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 (UUID: GPU-addf70ec-1a4e-f8db-39bc-59d1ab271798)

Describe the bug

When playing certain titles on my RTX 5090 rig, I experience frequent "freezes" where the game window will freeze but some audio continues to play in the background. During the freezes, I am able to use everything else on my PC normally without any indications of a GPU hang. After 3-5 seconds, the game "unfreezes" and then catches up to where it should be.

This happens with every compositor I have tried: KWin wayland, cosmic-comp, and gamescope. I have tried every 570 and 575 driver release and experience this issue on all of them.

Games I experience this freezing with include:

• Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (DX12)
• The First Berserker: Khazan (DX11 and DX12)
• Star Citizen (DX11)
• Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth (DX12)

Games I do not experience this freezing with include:

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance (DX11)
• Horizon: Forbidden West (DX12)
• Death Stranding

To Reproduce

KWin repro steps:

1. Launch Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on an RTX 5090 (settings should not matter)
2. Play the game for 5-20 minutes

At some random point in that timespan, you should start running into this freezing bug.

Gamescope repro steps:

1. Launch Steam inside of gamescope with gamescope -e -f -h <height> -w <width> -r <refresh rate> --mangoapp --adaptive-sync -- steam -steamdeck -steamos3 -steampal -gamepadui
2. Launch Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (make sure the only launch option you are using is SteamDeck=0 %command%)
3. Play the game for 5-20 minutes
4. When you encounter a freeze, try pulling up one of the Steam side menus with the Xbox logo or Shift + Tab on your keyboard

You should see a similar effect to the gameplay clip I posted below

Bug Incidence

Always

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz

steam-1903340.log

More Info

One interesting tidbit I found is that I am able to "unfreeze" the game if I pull up a separate DRM plane, like one of the Steam side menus when running Steam's GamepadUI inside of gamescope. An example of this is here:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/c406a8c4-8ea3-461c-8e5e-18e1cb467015

You can see at the end of the clip it gets stuck for a few seconds but the instant I pull up the side menu, it unfreezes.

Start by reviewing the attached nvidia-bug-report.log.gz and steam-1903340.log, then reproduce the freeze with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 using the listed KWin and gamescope steps on an RTX 5090. Compare behavior across the listed affected and unaffected games, compositors, and driver releases. Done means identifying the open kernel driver cause and verifying that the 3–5 second freezes no longer occur.