Nvidia RTX 4070 Super stuttering on videos and mouse

[HungryPooch]

I think you're right, if you've got bleeding edge or special use-case hardware, then it is more likely you'll get better support out of a newer kernel which some distros offer. I imagine that turning off the "silent" profile of your GPU might would require a modified NVIDIA driver that knows how to turn on and off that feature.
I just finished watching a YouTube video on the mixed experiences that Windows users are having coming over to Linux. One of them is custom hardware or specialised rigs requiring dropping to the command-line.
I'm really sorry it has all been such a pain. When I first tried out Linux on my setup, I found myself using the nouveau driver as well.
I logged in just now to share that I decided to see if games still perform poorly under the new Wayland stack, and "yes", noticeably so.

I imagine you will be fine with the Nvidia driver out of the picture.
Keep us posted.
Have you tried Nobara with your rig?
Not that I'm encouraging you to prolong your suffering.
Is Linux Worth It? (Michael Horn): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulzGTwWUhtY
Is Dual Booting Really Worth It?(Michael Horn): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPoM3LpMUcY

Michael Horn is a big proponent of Linux, but he also admits that it isn't for every configuration.
He gives balanced, practical advice. You might want to check out his channel for inspiration.

Correction on Wayland performance: I just realised that my laptop was set to power saving mode.
Setting my system to performance mode gives a comparable experience on Wayland to X11 -- at least that's how it feel for the 5 minutes I've played. it is slightly less stable in terms of frame rate, but not significantly.

[Joe]

Yes it's hard. but as I'm using this pepper rod long wise for office, banking, www and some other things mainly, I don't have to get all the power this system could gain.

Games are relevant but I don't have these Counterstrike or other hard games using last bit of the system...

so the next goal is to find a banking software like starmoney, doesn't matter if it costs a little bit, got the option moneyplex or hibiskus, while hibiskus seems to be old-fashioned and if you work with more than 2 bank accounts it seems to be boring....

Ok enough off topic...

See you Joe

BTW to try Nobara I have to kill zorin. I have 3 internal devices, on 2 TB Samsung SSD and two 4 TB NVMe Samsung . the ssd is for the main system, on one ofe the 4 TB I have windows recovery files and on the other recovery files of Zorin... So I need an extra drive to do so.

Thats not my time now, but I keep it in mind if Zorin crashes out...

[HungryPooch]

Nice storage setup. Nice use of the NVMe storage for recovery. Well thought out.
So, setting the Nvidia GPU to Prefer High Performance mode does not stop the "silent mode" from kicking in? That's disappointing.

Often, I found myself fixing Windows stuttering issues by disabling power-saving and sleeping and configuring everything for performance.
I would think the same applies to Linux.
I'm surprised that the performance mode is not configurable for your GPU despite it being a special edition. I would think GPU "Silent" mode is just custom GPU profile, hand-tuned by the manufacturer.

And sorry, I don't know anything about financial apps. I'm live hand-to-mouth.

You have a serious setup there. Nice.

There is a bleeding edge distribution called ArchLinux for hardcore Linux techies -- not in anyway for your average user.
I post their NVIDIA troubleshooting Wiki here just to show you how far down the rabbithole you can go troubleshooting these things.

NVIDIA/Troubleshooting - ArchWiki

[Joe]

No, settings to high performance etc pp doesn't help on it, because the card ist stepping down on it self.

So you need a correct driver to handle it and giving the kernel the permission to allow stepping in fps, voltage and speed.

That's the problem on the linux kernels if your using special hardware. So if you need all adjustments and performance of your gaming setting or in my case the silent mode allowing , you have to use kernels and drivers to do so.

That's the point of Linux gaming kernels like Nobara and equivalents.

Yesterday I had only one crash after 12 ours when I formed a folder link of my NAS on the desktop with an coloured icon. So here is the nouveau driver with low performance on the way.
If I don't get crashes during normal use it's no problem. Creating the desktop in this combination can be critical as we see.

So let's look what to come next....

[HungryPooch]

Hey Joe,
I just logged in here to say it's a rainy Friday afternoon in the UK and so...
why not backup and rebuild my Zorin installation from scratch?
It's working far too well for me anyway. I need some drama.
Let's see where I am in 3 hours, shall we?
I'm feeling pretty confident I can bring everything back from backups, etc.
I'm going to start off by doing an install of Zorin OS 18 Pro from the latest ISO and see if gaming just works.
I'm certain that I had to tweak, but I do not remember quite what.
This will be a good reminder.
Wish me luck!

For the crash that you're getting, it might be a Gnome desktop extension not playing nice. You can try disabling them with the Extension app.
I have a issue in which I can freeze the entire desktop by right-clicking an app's title bar and choosing close. I can only recover by holding the power button down to reset the laptop.
Desktop Discord is an app with which it happens consistently.
I simply avoid closing apps that way to work around the issue.

I keep my gaming installation on a separate partition, so I can reinstall the OS without having to redownload Gigs of games. Same goes for my local synced NextCloud personal folders.

[HungryPooch]

So, I had forgotten that my laptop had a wired connection when I installed Zorin for the first time back in December. Turns out that my laptops Wifi driver isn't included with the ISO.
I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what had changed until the penny dropped.
Anyway, I found the suggestion from the Zorin Support site to tether my iPhone via cable and that did the trick. I was able to update and download the Wifi drivers.

So long story short, I found that I was able to get my go-to FPS game up and running on NVIDIA quickly. I didn't really need to do anything special beyond anything we haven't already discussed here.

An interesting thing though, I found to get proper NVIDIA detection during installation, I needed to initiate the install from an NVIDIA enabled Live USB session, otherwise a more generic driver would be installed.

With the rebuild, the laptop is incredibly fast with all the bloat gone as I went straight to installing Steam and playing the game.

I thought there might be something special that I had forgotten about getting NVIDIA to work with my system, but no. For me, it just works.

Sorry not to uncovered some secret sauce that may have helped you.

I think I'll try restoring all my apps and configuration from backup now.
Should be interesting.
Have a nice evening.
10pm here.

[HungryPooch]

Joe,
Laying in bed this morning, I had an idea... a really good idea if we haven't tried it.
Zorin uses the Gnome desktop which in turn uses extensions to add/remove functionality and change the look and feel. It is a common experience in the Gnome community for extensions to sometimes not play nice with certain hardware, software, configurations.

Go to the Software store and install the Zorin-edition of the Extension Manager app.
In it, you'll see all of the various extensions that are enabled to provide Zorin the ability to emulate different desktop experiences.
Try turning them all off and then switching over to the NVIDIA 580 driver to see if the stuttering reduces or goes away. In addition, if you have installed software that interacts with your NAS or if you have mapped storage to your NAS, try disabling that temporarily.

I would not be surprised if the stuttering results from the Gnome desktop freezing from a desktop extension conflicting with your NAS and/or video card.

Depending upon the graphics driver you are using, the negative effects such as stuttering become more obvious with each exception being thrown in the kernel. On a less aggressive GPU driver, the exception may go unnoticed until it eventually leaks enough system resources to cause a system hang/crash.

Should be easy enough to try.

1. Install "Extension Manager" app
2. Disable all Extensions
3. Change NVIDIA driver back to originally recommended driver and reboot
4. If still stuttering, remove NAS from the equation
5. If stuttering goes away, start adding things back until stuttering returns.

See the screenshot for the GPU driver that Zorin selected for my configuration, as well as all the various extensions that are used by the Gnome desktop.

To reset the extensions, you just choose a Zorin Appearance profile/appearance.

If the issue is a Gnome desktop extension, then the solution is to disable it until an update comes out or find an alternative extension that provides similar functionality.

Yes, I'm obsessive -- a bit.

Also, I recommend logging in under a X11 session, not Wayland.
That being said, you can also try Wayland as well with extensions disabled.

Exceptions should show up in the kernel logs as well. Were logs ever checked?

Micro-Stutters possibly due to refresh intervals of mounted remote file systems?

The following is AI Generated Research on troubleshooting problematic Gnome extensions. Notice one of the observations is:
"Some extensions cause regular micro-freezes at fixed intervals (e.g., every 4–5 seconds)"

GNOME Extensions Causing Desktop Freezes

GNOME extensions are a common culprit for desktop freezes and performance issues. Here's how to diagnose and fix them:

Identifying the Problem Extension

• Disable all extensions, then re-enable them one by one to isolate the problematic one[3]
• Monitor gnome-shell memory/CPU usage — it can spike dramatically (e.g., 300%+ memory utilization) when a bad extension is active[6]
• Some extensions cause regular micro-freezes at fixed intervals (e.g., every 4–5 seconds)[2]

Quick Fixes

Restart GNOME Shell without logging out (X11 only):

pkill -HUP gnome-shell

On Wayland, this kills the entire session — save your work first.[1]

Disable all extensions via TTY (if the shell is frozen):

1. Press Ctrl+Alt+F2 to switch to a TTY
2. Log in and run:

gsettings set org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions "[]"

Remove problematic extension folders manually:[1]

~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions/
/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/

Other Common Causes

• Memory leaks in gnome-shell (check with htop or free -h)[5]
• Outdated extensions incompatible with your GNOME version — disable version validation temporarily:[1]

gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-extension-version-validation true

• Screen tearing fixes like "Disable unredirect fullscreen" can ironically cause game freezes[3]

Prevention

• Keep extensions updated via extensions.gnome.org/local
• Minimize the number of active extensions
• Prefer well-maintained extensions with recent update histories

*** End AI Research ***

Interesting that...

Note that the reference for the "micro-freezes" dates back to 2013/2014, but interestingly one of the comments in the thread traces the problem to the disk refresh interval of a mounted remote file system. Could this be similar to a NAS mounted volume?

" On my Arch laptop (Gnome 3.14), the Shell always freezes when I copy files from a remote GVFS mount, either using Nautilus or gvfs-copy. Disabling the applet restores proper behavior.

If I use a large value (say 30 seconds) as the Disk refresh time, freezes happen predictably every 30 seconds for a couple of seconds."

Src: Regular "micro-freezes" when extension is enabled in gnome-shell 3.6.3 · Issue #202 · paradoxxxzero/gnome-shell-system-monitor-applet · GitHub

[HungryPooch]

A really good Linux Distro comparison site.
All sorts of comparative tables.

DistroWatch.com: Zorin OS

[Joe]

Yeah, Distrowatch is cool.

The gnome desktop has it's own problems with special graphic works.

May be the further versions kill these problems and the kernels getting up to date on modern high end hardware. That would help most Windows Users to change.