Screen flickering on mouse move (Ubuntu 20/21, Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Pro)

I recently purchased a Lenovo IdeaPad 5i Pro (16IHU6) with the following configuration

CPU: i5-11300H
GPU: nVidia MX450
Display: 2k@120Hz

and I fail to run Ubuntu 20.04/21.10 (to be honest, any Linux so far) on it, without having serious screen issues (both, using the integrated and dedicated graphics card).

Problem Description

The screen flickers and/or flashes when I (1) move the mouse, (2) switch between windows, (3) browsing on YouTube etc. The exact cause remains unclear but the frequency of these issues seem to depend on the overall setup, i.e. which graphics card is used, which display manager is used, which resolution and refresh rate is set, and so on.

Here's the output of dmesg -l err:

<some AE_NOT_FOUND errors>
pci 0000:00:07.0: DPC: RP PIO log size 0 is invalid
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* CPU pipe A FIFO underrun

and sometimes as well:

i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Potential atomic update failure on pipe A
ucsi_acpi USBC000:00: PPM init failed (-110)
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Potential atomic update failure on pipe A
i915 0000:00:02.0: [drm] *ERROR* Atomic update failure on pipe A (start=2109 end=2110) time 17 us, min 1579, max 1599, scanline start 1595, end 1602

Partial workaround

I managed to remove the issues on mouse move (1) on Ubuntu 21.10 by uninstalling xserver-xorg-video-intel and rebooting. The nVidia settings confirm that the dedicated GPU is used now (driver: nvidia 495.44).

However, this setup drains the battery way too fast and the other actions still cause the described issues. They persist, even though the dedicated GPU is used, for the nvidia module depends on the drm module, which is supposedly why the i915 module is still loaded.

Resolution attempts

upgrade all packages
use Ubuntu on Wayland
configure the Intel device (TearFree mode etc.) as suggested in another post
switch to lightdm and xdm (subjectively improved the issues)
configure the kernel parameter edp_vswing as suggested in another post
configuring kernel parameter intel_iommu=off resolved other errors listed by dmesg but non of the display issues
configuring kernel parameter i915.enable_rc6=0
configuring kernel parameters i915.enable_psr=0 and/or i915.enable_fbc=0
create and apply custom display modes via xrandr
install nvidia-driver-455|460|490 from the PPA
using Fedora 35, having a newer kernel (as far as I understand, the integrated Intel graphics driver is part of the kernel)
update BIOS

Summary

There seems to be an issue with the integrated graphics card driver.

This issue has an impact, regardless if the integrated or dedicated graphics card is used and persist in multiple Linux distributions but not Windows.

Is there anyone who has managed running Ubuntu on this device? What can I do to further debug or resolve the matter?

Solution 1:

The solution was to set enable_psr=0 correctly:

Create a file /etc/modprobe.d/i915.conf with the following content

options i915 enable_psr=0

and apply this configuration via

sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo update-grub

After rebooting, my flickering and flashing issues were gone.