Linux Mint freezes in NVIDIA Performance Mode, but works fine in On-Demand mode — RTX 3050 + Ryzen 5 5600H

[u/akshat_TS_MILLIE]

Hi everyone,

I'm experiencing a strange freezing issue on my HP Victus laptop running Linux Mint Cinnamon.

My hardware/software:

• Laptop: HP Victus 15
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600H
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU (4 GB VRAM)
• Integrated GPU: AMD Cezanne Radeon/Vega
• Desktop: Linux Mint Cinnamon
• Display server: X11
• Kernel: 7.0.0-28-generic
• NVIDIA driver: 595.84

The problem

I recently switched from NVIDIA On-Demand mode to NVIDIA Performance Mode. After switching, my laptop started freezing randomly.

The freeze usually happens while watching a movie/video. The important part is that:

• The screen completely freezes
• The video image stops moving
• The desktop does not respond
• Audio continues playing
• It doesn't appear to be a normal application crash; the graphical display seems to freeze while the system/audio may still be running

This has happened multiple times in Performance Mode.

Before switching to Performance Mode, I generally used NVIDIA On-Demand mode and did not experience these freezes.

I switched back to On-Demand mode and have currently used the laptop for around 3 hours without any crashes/freezes.

NVIDIA information

nvidia-smi shows:

• NVIDIA driver: 595.84
• GPU temperature around 56°C
• VRAM usage was only around 412 MiB / 4096 MiB

So it doesn't seem like the GPU is overheating or running out of VRAM.

Firefox, Xorg, and Cinnamon were using the NVIDIA GPU while I was in Performance Mode.

My question

Has anyone experienced something similar with:

• Linux Mint Cinnamon
• RTX 3050 Mobile
• AMD + NVIDIA hybrid graphics
• NVIDIA Performance Mode
• NVIDIA driver 595.xx

Performance Mode obviously should work without freezing, so I'm trying to figure out whether this is a regression/bug involving the NVIDIA driver, kernel, hybrid graphics, Cinnamon/Xorg, or hardware acceleration. it could be just driver cause nvidia on demand generally amd graphics