I updated this morning to the latest kernel 7.1.6 and noticed when watching Youtube in Firefox that I was getting periodic white horizontal lines across the video, just for a split second. I thought maybe it was the video, but I fired up FurMark and I was seeing the same thing in the test window. I searched on here but there are as yet no reports. A quick web search and Fedora users are having a lot of issue with this kernel: https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/graphical-issues-on-amd-after-kernel-update-to-7-1-6/198522 - this looks much worse than what I experienced.
Rolling back to 7.1.5 and there are no issues present. If you are a 9070 or 9060 user, you may want to hold off updating or be prepared to roll back if you experience issues.
I had the same or very similar issues: small graphical glitches and, which I didn’t see mentioned in the linked Fedora discussion, 100% brightness looking (about) the same as 0% brightness (95% and below were fine, didn’t test every step though). Booting back into 7.1.5 fixed both.
On a Framework 16 laptop, 7940HS CPU with 780M GPU.
Small update: seems not all graphical glitches got fixed by the revert, still seeing some, even after a hard power-off instead of a reboot. Especially when switching between desktops with some windows on them or when clicking on an icon in Plasma systray that opens a popup ‘menu’ (e.g. notifications, networkmanager).
Which is odd as I didn’t notice any of them yesterday (when running on 7.1.5 all day and using above-mentioned features quite a bit)…
Experiencing the same issue on my R7 8840HS CPU, 780M GPU. Booting into 7.1.5 fixes the issue for me and since 7.1.7 still aren’t on Tumbleweed snapshot so I couldn’t test but best to stay on 7.1.5 for awhile
I didn’t read anything about it, I just got 7.1.7 today and booted it to try it out. even played a few hours of stellaris without any glitches whatsoever.
Kernel 7.1.8 has just been published upstream with two patches that hopefully will fix this issue:
commit 971962e96618ea2eacdf4631404f5a7c1f553a66
Author: Leo Li sunpeng.li@amd.com
Date: Wed Aug 5 12:33:14 2026 -0400
drm/amd/display: Exit idle optimizations before programming
commit be5c6ca1924acddcf95d844e4e8cd5c29fd53e1f
Author: Leo Li sunpeng.li@amd.com
Date: Wed Jul 29 13:37:43 2026 -0400
drm/amd/display: check GRPH_FLIP status before sending event
One of the things I always hear about Tumbleweed is how well updates are tested before they get pushed out.
So it’s a little frustrating to see kernel 7.1.6 being shipped with this AMDGPU artifact issue. In my case, going back to 7.1.5 fixes it completely.
I know testing can’t catch everything, but now that this issue is known and has been reproduced across different AMD GPUs and even different distributions, I’m a bit surprised that 7.1.6 is still being shipped instead of being temporarily pulled, reverted, or at least clearly flagged for affected AMD users.
My installation is very new. So i only have the kernel 7.1.6 and waiting another week or whenever opensuse releases 7.1.8 is no option.
How do i proper downgrade to 7.1.5 ?
I download kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1.x86_64.rpm from https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/Kernel:/stable/standard/x86_64/ and try zypper -install.
'kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1.x86_64.rpm' looks like an RPM file. Will try to use it.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
The selected package 'kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1.x86_64' from repository 'Plain RPM files cache' has lower version than the installed one. Use 'zypper install --oldpackage kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1.x86_64' to force installation of the package.
Resolving package dependencies...
Nothing to do.
'kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1.x86_64.rpm' looks like an RPM file. Will try to use it.
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following NEW package is going to be installed:
kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1
The following package requires a system reboot:
kernel-default-7.1.5-1.1
1 new package to install.
Package download size: 200.4 MiB
Package install size change:
| 211.8 MiB required by packages that will be installed
211.8 MiB | - 0 B released by packages that will be removed
Note: System reboot required.
Backend: classic_rpmtrans
The only thing i have to stay sure is to select at boot menu the second entry for the older kernel.
Simple forgot that if something wrong i can even go back there anyway.
Thank you! It works.
You could now uninstall kernel-defaukt 7.1.6 to have your kernel (better lock it until the kernel you need appears). That would solve your little boot menu issue
You may want to have a basic read what openQA is, what it can and what not. openQA is technically not able to catch graphical glitches which would occur on real machines. This is not the goal, conception, purpose and technical scope of openQA.
Given that the marketshare of AMD GPUs is in the 1 digit % range, it is not advised to retract a kernel which has security fixes for all users only to please a few users with graphical glitches. And if you read the forums of other distributions, you would see that not even all users of AMD GPUs are affected…so we are talking about some 0,xx % users of any distribution which are affected… Even more reason not to retract this working kernel for all users.
If you have any clue or idea how to technically improve openQA so that it catches visual glitches for some hardware, the openSUSE devs will for sure welcome your contribution.
But the forum is not an ideal place to report issues. You should use bugzilla to report/discuss issues. You can use your forum credentials to login to bugzilla.
