I’m experiencing persistent display issues with my AMD Radeon RX 6500 XT (4GB GDDR6) and other GPUs on NixOS 25.05 and would appreciate your expertise. Here are the technical details:
Hardware & Validation
-
GPU: AMD RX 6500 XT
-
Failure Modes (random occurrence):
Screen flickering- Transient black screens (then it died.)
- Artifacts/corruption
- Complete system freeze (requires hard reset)
-
Stability Tests:
-
FurMark stress test: 1hr stable at 70°C (2560x1080) and it hadn’t crashed when testing
-
amdgpu_toprecognizes GPU correctly -
Vulkan/OpenCL workloads functional (Sometimes?)
-
Attempted Fixes
- i have tried the integrated graphics on 9950x and bought a new card
- i have asked NixOS-CN members in order to solve the problem
- Tested both Xorg (GNOME) and Hyprland (Wayland) sessions
- Installed different firmware and mesa or other basis pkgs.
Diagnostic Evidence
- I tried to get some logs’ part and put here, maybe useful.
# 1. AMD GPU drivers may have compability problems with wayland.
.gnome-shell-wr[2287]: Could not issue 'GetUnit' systemd call
.kgx-wrapped[2809]: vkGetPhysicalDeviceSurfacePresentModesKHR(): A surface is no longer available. (VK_ERROR_SURFACE_LOST_KHR)
Jun 08 08:29:41 nixos systemd-coredump[12002]: Process 11989 (.Hyprland-wrapp) of user 1000 dumped core.
# 2. The system services maybe causes the problem, too.
gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor[2531]: Error launching lsof: No such file or directory
tracker_indexing_tree_remove: assertion 'TRACKER_IS_INDEXING_TREE (tree)' failed
# 3. The AMD driver's status has err.
Jun 09 16:36:30 nixos kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: [drm] *ERROR* dc_dmub_srv_log_diagnostic_data: DMCUB error - collecting diagnostic data
Jun 09 16:36:33 nixos kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: amdgpu: SMU: I'm not done with your previous command: SMN_C2PMSG_66:0x00000029 SMN_C2PMSG_82:0x00000000
Jun 09 16:36:33 nixos kernel: amdgpu 0000:03:00.0: amdgpu: Failed to disable gfxoff!
# 4. The wayland compositor crashed.
Jun 09 16:36:27 nixos .gnome-shell-wr[1761]: Connection to xwayland lost
Jun 09 16:36:27 nixos .gnome-shell-wr[1761]: Xwayland terminated, exiting since it was mandatory
# 5. Input method conflict ( may it cause wrong dbus communication ?
.gnome-shell-wr[2287]: Failed to launch ibus-daemon: No such file or directory
org.fcitx.Fcitx5.desktop[2466]: Error spawning command-line `lsof -t "/run/media/vespr/Ventoy"': No such file or directory
# 6. Some repo were lost.
qq.desktop[16759]: dlopen:libcurl.so: cannot open shared object file
com.tencent.wechat.desktop[17086]: sh: line 1: /usr/bin/lsblk: No such file or directory
firefox.desktop[2946]: [ERROR wr_glyph_rasterizer::platform::unix::font] Unable to load glyph: 36
- If not enough, i also can provide full journal.
- Full system logs (last 72hrs) available here.
- My present NixOS dotfiles available here.
(p.s. i am new to nix so the dotfiles and other configs are shabby.)
System Configuration
# Relevant /etc/nixos/configuration.nix fragments:
# Kernel 6.15.1
...
users.users.vespr = {
isNormalUser = true;
description = "Vespr";
extraGroups = [ "networkmanager" "wheel" "video" "render" ];
packages = with pkgs; [];
shell = pkgs.fish;
};
...
services.xserver = {
enable = true;
displayManager.gdm.enable = true;
desktopManager.gnome.enable = true;
videoDrivers = [ "amdgpu" ];
};
...
hardware.graphics = {
enable = true;
enable32Bit = true;
};
hardware.graphics.extraPackages = with pkgs; [
mesa
amdvlk
amdenc
];
...
programs.hyprland.enable = true; # Hyprland as Wayland compositor
Additional Notes:
- Issue occurs during light workloads (e.g., web browsing, coding with JetBrains)
- No thermal throttling observed (
sensorsshows <75°C junction temp) - The distros i past used on the same hardware platform didnot have this issue
- But Gentoo had made me too tired, and, i hate arch.
As a boarding school student, i thought maybe i have no time but if i could, i am happy to provide additional testing data as needed. Thanks for your help! 
