Visual artifacts on UI elements and videos with Fractional Scaling (120Hz) - ThinkPad T14 OLED

Ask Fedora
1

Hi everyone,

I am experiencing a rendering issue on my ThinkPad T14 (OLED display) running Fedora Workstation (GNOME on Wayland).

When I set the display scaling to fractional values (like 133%, 150%, or 166%) and the refresh rate to 120Hz, I get micro-artifacts and rendering glitches. These thin, multicolored glitches appear primarily near interaction links in Firefox or on the edges of videos (e.g., on Reddit).

When I set the scaling to integer values (100% or 200%), everything works perfectly and the artifacts disappear completely.

System Information:

  • OS: Fedora Workstation

  • Desktop Environment: GNOME (Wayland)

  • Hardware: Lenovo ThinkPad T14 OLED

  • CPU/GPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 356H

Has anyone experienced similar fractional scaling glitches with Mutter/Wayland on recent Intel graphics, and is there a known workaround or an upstream Mutter/Xwayland issue I should track?

Thanks in advance!

2

It help if the scaling is on pixel boundaries.

I use 125% under kde plasma and do not see issues (I’m not a gnome user).

Does 125% and 175% work better.

3

You could try running this gsettings command gsettings set org.gnome.mutter.wayland xwayland-scaling-factor 1. This will disable the global fractional scaling for any x11 apps you use which sometimes have issues with how fractional scaling works on Wayland. The downside is you will need to manually rescale any X11 apps you have on a per application basis but it may clear up some of your issues.. Edit. This command will not change scaling for native wayland applications just applications running on X11.