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I recently purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Pro (16IHU6) with the following configuration

  • CPU: i5-11300H
  • GPU: nVidia MX450
  • Display: 2k@120Hz

and I fail to run Ubuntu 20.04/21.10 (to be honest, any Linux so far) on it, without having serious screen issues (both, using the integrated and dedicated graphics card).

Problem Description

The screen flickers and/or flashes when I (1) move the mouse, (2) switch between windows, (3) browsing on YouTube etc. The exact cause remains unclear but the frequency of these issues seem to depend on the overall setup, i.e. which graphics card is used, which display manager is used, which resolution and refresh rate is set, and so on.

Here's the output of dmesg -l err:

<some AE_NOT_FOUND errors>
pci 0000:00:07.0: DPC: RP PIO log size 0 is invalid
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun

and sometimes as well:

i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Potential atomic update failure on pipe A
ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: PPM init failed (-110)
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Potential atomic update failure on pipe A
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Atomic update failure on pipe A (start=2109 end=2110) time 17 us, min 1579, max 1599, scanline start 1595, end 1602

Partial workaround

I managed to remove the issues on mouse move (1) on Ubuntu 21.10 by uninstalling xserver-xorg-video-intel and rebooting. The nVidia settings confirm that the dedicated GPU is used now (driver: nvidia 495.44).

However, this setup drains the battery way too fast and the other actions still cause the described issues. They persist, even though the dedicated GPU is used, for the nvidia module depends on the drm module, which is supposedly why the i915 module is still loaded.

Resolution attempts

  • upgrade all packages
  • use Ubuntu on Wayland
  • configure the Intel device (TearFree mode etc.) as suggested in another post
  • switch to lightdm and xdm (subjectively improved the issues)
  • configure the kernel parameter edp_vswing as suggested in another post
  • configuring kernel parameter intel_iommu=off resolved other errors listed by dmesg but non of the display issues
  • configuring kernel parameter i915.enable_rc6=0
  • configuring kernel parameters i915.enable_psr=0 and/or i915.enable_fbc=0
  • create and apply custom display modes via xrandr
  • install nvidia-driver-455|460|490 from the PPA
  • using Fedora 35, having a newer kernel (as far as I understand, the integrated Intel graphics driver is part of the kernel)
  • update BIOS

Summary

There seems to be an issue with the integrated graphics card driver.

This issue has an impact, regardless if the integrated or dedicated graphics card is used and persist in multiple Linux distributions but not Windows.

Is there anyone who has managed running Ubuntu on this device? What can I do to further debug or resolve the matter?

1 Answer 1

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The solution was to set enable_psr=0 correctly:

Create a file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf with the following content

options i915 enable_psr=0

and apply this configuration via

sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo update-grub

After rebooting, my flickering and flashing issues were gone.

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  • I can confirm that this fix works on my Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro 14ITL6 as well. I installed Ubuntu 21.10, all hardware was detected out of the box, but I got that really crazy flickering. Hopefully they will have it fixed in the 22.04 LTS.
    – simo
    Mar 24, 2022 at 10:31
  • Awesome, thanks for this! BTW, this issue is still present in 22.04 LTS, unfortunately. Also, a tip: it's better to use tty (via Ctrl+Alt+F1) from login screen in order to update grub from it. Flickering is bearable in tty.
    – ov7a
    Apr 23, 2022 at 8:46
  • Darn. Tried this with an X1 Carbon that has the i915 chip and still got the problem after reboot. I'm running Xorg on Ubuntu 22.04. Never had this problem before I upgraded.
    – mlissner
    Jun 27, 2022 at 12:50
  • Thank you. I have a Yoga Slim 7 Pro. I didn't have screen flicker, but mouse very laggy specifically in Chrome and animations, videos, even basic page loading. Applying this fix solved it completely.
    – garyj
    Feb 23, 2023 at 10:35

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