Sea of Thieves (and possibly other games) freezing/crashing at random times with RDNA 4 Radeon 9070 XT

Brief summary of the problem:

When playing Sea of Thieves, at some point the display freezes. Game sound continues to play sometimes (as does sound from voice chat, and my microphone still works), and eventually all screens go black and I have to force restart using the power button (sometimes Ctrl + Alt + F1-6 works to get into a terminal and restart from there, but KDE is completely dead at this point).

This issue happened twice in a loading screen, one directly after starting a session from the main menu, and one after my character died in-game and loaded into the "Ferry of the Damned".

journalctl outputs this as it crashes:

Mar 08 18:54:58 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: Pageflip timed out! This is a bug in the amdgpu kernel driver
Mar 08 18:54:58 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: Please report this at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues
Mar 08 18:54:58 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: With the output of 'sudo dmesg' and 'journalctl --user-unit plasma-kwin_wayland --boot 0'
Mar 08 18:54:59 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: Pageflip timed out! This is a bug in the amdgpu kernel driver
Mar 08 18:54:59 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: Please report this at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues
Mar 08 18:54:59 bird-pc kwin_wayland[2374]: kwin_wayland_drm: With the output of 'sudo dmesg' and 'journalctl --user-unit plasma-kwin_wayland --boot 0'
# Repeats like 50 times

I never had a single crash in Sea of Thieves with my Radeon 7800 XT (in 100+ hours of gameplay), so I'm thinking it's likely RDNA 4 related. I only got the card today so I didn't have a lot of time with it yet, but it crashed once in a similar manner in a different game as well (Hogwarts Legacy in the pause/settings menu). What these two games have in common is that they both don't run in exclusive full screen mode, but in borderless window mode instead - not sure if that's in any way related.

Hardware description:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
• GPU: PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 9070 XT (03:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device [1002:7550] (rev c0))
• System Memory: 64 GB
• Display(s): 3840x2160@60 Hz (no VRR), 3440x1440@160 Hz (VRR, game runs on this screen), 2560x1440@165 Hz (VRR)
• Type of Display Connection: all displays use DisplayPort 1.4

I tried unplugging the 2560x1440@165 Hz screen (thought it might be related to multi-display VRR), but a crash happened without it connected as well.

System information:

• Distro name and Version: openSUSE Tumbleweed 20250306
• Kernel version: 6.13.5-1-default #1 (closed) SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Feb 28 07:06:44 UTC 2025 (ff9b7ff) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Custom kernel: N/A
• AMD official driver version: N/A (I use Mesa 25.0.0, not the proprietary driver)

How to reproduce the issue:

Start Sea of Thieves and play for a bit. For me this crash only happened in loading screens so far, so try triggering some loading screens by dying, using a mermaid to return to your ship or similar. It's not consistent so reproducing it can take multiple hours.

Attached files:

Screenshots/video files

I saw a single rendering error in the game that I never saw with my 7800 XT, but I'm not sure if that's in any way related:

(The out of place looking floor tile isn't supposed to be there)

Log files (for system lockups / game freezes / crashes)

sudo journalctl -o short-precise -k -b -1: journalctl-k.log

sudo dmesg (current boot where I didn't start any game yet): dmesg.log

journalctl --user-unit plasma-kwin_wayland --boot -1 (game crash after 1-2 hours loading into the "Ferry of the Damned"): journalctl-kwin-1.log

journalctl --user-unit plasma-kwin_wayland --boot -2 (instant game crash after starting a session): journalctl-kwin-2.log

❯ rpm -qa | grep -i -E '(radeon|amdgpu|mesa|kernel-default)'
kernel-firmware-radeon-20250206-1.1.noarch
libvulkan_radeon-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-libGL-devel-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-libva-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-demo-x-9.0.0-3.4.x86_64
Mesa-demo-egl-9.0.0-3.4.x86_64
libdrm_amdgpu1-2.4.124-2.1.x86_64
Mesa-gallium-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-dri-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
libvdpau_radeonsi-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-dri-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-libGL1-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-libGL1-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
kernel-firmware-amdgpu-20250302-1.1.noarch
Mesa-KHR-devel-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-gallium-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-libEGL1-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
libdrm_radeon1-32bit-2.4.124-2.1.x86_64
libvulkan_radeon-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
libdrm_radeon1-2.4.124-2.1.x86_64
Mesa-libEGL-devel-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
libdrm_amdgpu1-32bit-2.4.124-2.1.x86_64
Mesa-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-vulkan-device-select-32bit-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
Mesa-vulkan-device-select-25.0.0-1699.407.pm.1.x86_64
kernel-default-6.13.4-1.1.x86_64
kernel-default-6.13.5-1.1.x86_64

UPDATE: Another crash after tabbing out (I completely disabled VRR to try if that might cause it as I had issues with VRR with RDNA3 in the past (fixed now though)), journalctl -xe:

journalctl.log

This time KDE didn't crash and the display didn't freeze, just the game froze (sound still playing) and I could simply exit the game via Steam and restart.

Also noticed I was using Direct3D 11 in game settings, I'm trying Direct3D 12 now (not sure if that matters as it all gets translated to Vulkan anyway, but may as well try).

changed the description

changed the description

#3983 (comment 2815652)

Same issue/error, different game (Monster Hunter Wilds), on a very similar setup (9070 XT, up-to-date opensuse TW)

Happens at seemingly random times so far (one time in a menu at one of the game's towns, another time in the middle of a battle)

Ditto, similar problems. The game does not matter too much -- I had this playing Final Fantasy XI as well which is a D3D8 title that I had using some DXVK wrapper to run. It happened on BG3 as well on a random run. It's not really clear to me what triggers it but I'll try and collect more logs when it does.

I just had the same kind of freeze/crash not even playing any game, just watching a YouTube video in fullscreen on LibreWolf (Firefox fork) while using the mouse in another LibreWolf window on a different display.

journalctl-librewolf.log

I tried using kernel 6.14-rc5 just to see if it makes a difference. I got another crash after 10-15 minutes watching YouTube. This time only LibreWolf crashed at first, but when I tried to kill the librewolf process, KDE froze.

journalctl-librewolf2.log

I should mention that I use the Flatpak version of LibreWolf.

For testing I let my computer run Hogwarts Legacy for 2 hours. When I came back, the game was still running fine (not frozen), but as soon as I tabbed out and then back in, the game froze (sound still playing). KDE was still working on the other displays, but as soon as I killed the Hogwarts game process, KDE completely froze/crashed. Alt-tabbing out and in of games seems to be the trigger of a lot of these crashes (not all though).

journalctl-alttab.log

This happened with Mesa 25.0.1 by the way (Tumbleweed pushed the Mesa 25.0.1 update a couple of hours ago).

I'm wondering if this issue is KDE specific? I have another issue with the 9070 XT where video playback in mpv under KDE has heavy "distortion" and flickering in full screen that doesn't happen under Gnome for example (but it also never happened with my Radeon 7800 XT).

Unfortunately, I ran similar tests to see if my card was stable and temperatures were OK, etc using Baldur's Gate 3. I run GNOME. Alt tab also caused the game to completely freeze, randomly.

I'm currently testing Plasma on X11 instead of Wayland and couldn't reproduce the issue after around ~12 hours of testing. Not nearly enough to say for sure it won't crash, but so far, so good.

I tried this and X11 seems to be a bit more stable but still crashed after a few hours of playing Foxhole. I'm using Arch with the mesa-git and lib32-mesa-git packages from the AUR.

At the very least, I am simply kicked back to the login screen rather than the display getting stuck while the system and my other monitors continue to work. I will update this if it crashes in a different way.

I have no issues at all while gaming or doing any other activities in Windows, including during very demanding things like VR.

I'm somewhat new to all this so I have just attached what dmesg gave me.

dmesg.txt

• OS: Arch Linux x86_64
• Kernel: Linux 6.13.6-arch1-1
• DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.3
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 6 5600g
• GPU: VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 48 [RX 9070/9070 XT] (rev c3) Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 0618 Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
• Display(s): 1920x1080@180hz, 1920x1080@144hz, 1920x1080@60hz (graphics tablet)
• Type of Display Connection: 2x DisplayPort 1.4, graphics tablet via HDMI.

Edit:

Another crash on X11 KDE after reverting back to the stable mesa 1:25.0.1-2, lib32-mesa 1:25.0.1-2, vulkan-radeon 1:25.0.1-2, packages on Arch as they were updated on the 13th.

I continue to have no issues on Windows.

dmesg.log

added 9000 dGPU series label

I am getting similar issues, but the cause of the freezes seem to differ from time to time.

Hardware description:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X
• GPU: ASUS PRIME RX 9070 OC (0a:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 48 [RX 9070/9070 XT] [1002:7550] (rev c3))
• System Memory: 64GB DDR4-3600
• Display(s): 2560x1440@165Hz (VRR)
• Type of Display Connection: DisplayPort 1.4

System information:

• Distro name and Version: ArchLinux
• Kernel version: Linux david-workstation 6.13.6-arch1-1 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri, 07 Mar 2025 20:19:00 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux
• Custom kernel: N/A
• AMD official driver version: N/A - Mesa 25.0.1

Logs

Page Flip Timeouts

• Kernel: journalctl-k-b4.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b4.log
• Kernel: journalctl-k-b20.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b20.log

Null Pointer Dereference

• Kernel: journalctl-k-b1.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b1.log
• Kernel: journalctl-k-b9.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b9.log
• Kernel: journalctl-k-b13.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b13.log
• Kernel: journalctl-k-b26.log / plasma-kwin_wayland: journalctl-u-b26.log

Remarks

There is also another issue where, with default power limits (of 230W), the RX 9070 sometimes runs into GFX ring timeouts. I can open a new issue for this if needed.

I am also getting the same page flip errors occurring in Final Fantasy XIV:

Hardware description:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• GPU: PowerColor Red Devil Radeon RX 9070 XT
• System Memory: 32 GB
• Display(s): 1920x1080@75Hz, 3840x2160@60Hz
• Type of Display Connection: HDMI, DisplayPort

System information:

• Distro name and Version: CachyOS
• Desktop environment: KDE Plasma 6.3.3
• Kernel version: Linux 6.13.6-2-cachyos (x86_64)
• AMD official driver version: N/A
  • Currently on Mesa 25.1.0-devel (git-eb8017ca68)

log: journalctl-boot.log

kwin_wayland log: journalctl-kwin.log

I don't seem to be crashing in Dota 2 (vulkan) so far. Several sessions over several days. Could be a coincidence of course

mentioned in issue #4041

I haven't been getting any crashes in games running the main branch of Mesa after the fixes mentioned in mesa/mesa#12781 (comment 2825204) (probably specifically mesa/mesa@1e4cfd9d). Not 100% confident it won't happen again as I need more time to test, but looking good so far. These fixes are included in Mesa 25.0.2 as well.

Can't say the same myself. Running newest mesa-git, and certain games are still highly likely to cause the pageflip system freeze, same as described in the original issue. (9070XT, 6.13.7-arch1-1)

I logged to write that I hadn't had any recent crashes since upgrading to the newest mesa-git but then I had a game lock up on me just now.