[SOLVED] Solution for display stuttering, lagging, and GPU usage spiking randomly at idle with AMD RX 6700

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Apr 17, 2023
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Note: This is a solved problem that was really cursed to troubleshoot, so I'm posting a solution in case anyone else encounters the same problem.

I built a new PC with the following components:

- Ryzen 7 5700X
- Radeon 6700
- Fractal Design Ridge Mini ITX case (you'll see why this is relevant shortly)

and experienced a very strange issue where even at idle, the GPU usage of the Windows system process would continue spiking repeatedly, causing/related to immense display and input lag and frame dropping on a build that shouldn't be having that issue. I switched to my linux partition and still experienced the issue, confirming that it's not a software issue. (The system GPU usage spiking is probably a symptom rather than the problem) This problem was intermittent but followed little discernible pattern.

Watching "dmesg -Hw" for some time while the problem was occurring eventually showed the following error:
Code:
[drm:dc_dmub_srv_wait_idle [amdgpu]] *ERROR* Error waiting for DMUB idle: status=3

(I mention the above only as a diagnostic step towards identifying whether your issue is the same as mine.)

Other forum threads mention people fixing this issue by re-seating their graphics card. Re-seating my graphics card didn't fix the problem, but a dodgy graphics card connection was still the issue. It turns out that the Fractal Design Ridge Mini ITX case comes with a PCIe 3.0 riser for the 16x slot, which causes issues with some configurations when run in PCIe 4.0 mode. Fractal Design made an official statement about it here.

TL;DR: If the riser causes you trouble, you can manually set the PCIe slot to 3.0 mode in your BIOS as a stopgap measure until you can contact their support and receive a replacement 4.0 compatible riser.
 
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Apr 17, 2023
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Apologies if I haven't tagged this right or something. I'm a bit new to using this forum. I also can't figure out how to mark this as solved.
 
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