Terminal Unresponsive when Playing Games

[acelinkio]

Windows Terminal version

1.20.11781.0

Windows build number

10.0.26100.0

Other Software

Steam
Any game launched through steam

Steps to reproduce

Start a video game and open Windows Terminal. Windows Terminal becomes unresponsive. This is true for any shell that terminal launches. powershell, cmd, wsl. This is on a fresh install of Windows 11 2024H2 on my Desktop with AMD Ryzen 7950x3d. I have disabled Game Mode and ensured power settings were set to performance.

Please note that a terminal inside of VSCode works without issue while Windows Terminal is entirely unresponsive.

Expected Behavior

No change in Windows Terminal performance when other programs are launching.

Actual Behavior

Windows Terminal freezes. After 3-5 minutes the terminal will accept keystrokes but quickly freeze again.

[acelinkio]

Turning the setting Use the new text renderer ("AtlasEngine") to Off and relaunching appears to be a workaround.

[lhecker]

This isn't an issue that's exclusive to Windows Terminal as it also occurs with Discord for instance. Given that you've got a 7950X3D, I suspect you're not gaming on the iGPU. Can you tell us what GPU you have? I suspect it's an Nvidia one, because I have that issue as well and also have an Nvidia GPU.

My suspicion is that this is a bug in the Nvidia driver and/or with the interaction with DWM. Windows 11 24H2 has the new WDDM 3.2 model after all, plus a ton of new DWM features. It's definitely not a bug in Windows Terminal itself.

[acelinkio]

This isn't an issue that's exclusive to Windows Terminal as it also occurs with Discord for instance. Given that you've got a 7950X3D, I suspect you're not gaming on the iGPU. Can you tell us what GPU you have? I suspect it's an Nvidia one, because I have that issue as well and also have an Nvidia GPU.

My suspicion is that this is a bug in the Nvidia driver and/or with the interaction with DWM. Windows 11 24H2 has the new WDDM 3.2 model after all, plus a ton of new DWM features. It's definitely not a bug in Windows Terminal itself.

Running a Nvidia 3090ti. Didn't really consider the terminal was leveraging the dGPU. Your explaination makes sense.

On my prior Windows 11 install I faced a lot of bugs where programs launched with the iGPU. Windows Management and other apps like CPUz for example would take minutes to launch. On that previous install I disabled the iGPU in Device Manager would fix some issues but cause other GUI funkyness. So far Win11 24h2 has been solid without disabling the iGPU in Device Manager outside of Windows Terminal.

Is there a better way to disable the iGPU? I didn't see an option in my motherboard bios. Back in my day as long as you plugged the monitor into the dGPU, you were good.

[lhecker]

Didn't really consider the terminal was leveraging the dGPU.

Text was always rendered using the GPU, even on ancient versions of Windows (Windows 2000, etc.), so in that regard nothing has changed. And it doesn't outright use the dGPU either: Instead, it uses your "primary" GPU, which is the GPU where your primary display is connected to. If you were to plug your display into your mainboard instead of your Nvidia GPU we'd use the iGPU.

I don't really recommend disabling the iGPU in Windows as doing so does not save power. It just hides it from Windows while keeping it fully powered, and you don't even get the benefits of having an iGPU anymore. Disabling it in the BIOS on the other hand should have an effect and reduce power draw. There's nothing that the RDNA2 iGPU can do that your dGPU can't so doing that should be safe (since both are about the same age). (But if anything goes wrong, please keep in mind that I can't visit you to fix it. 😄 Everything I'm writing here should not be taken as advice to actually do it.)

I didn't see an option in my motherboard bios.

There are many different locations for that setting, depending on the customization from your mainboard vendor. It's always in the "Advanced" tab, and then sometimes in a "Chipset" or "Onboard" configuration submenu. If it's in none of the submenus in the "Advanced" tab, you can go to "AMD CBS" and then either "NBIO Common Options" or "GFX Configuration" or similar. Within those, there should be a setting to disable the iGPU. Only use the AMD CBS menu if it's not anywhere else. Keep in mind that afterwards you'll need your Nvidia GPU to see anything. If it's ever missing or broken you need to reset your BIOS completely.

That will not solve your issue though. In fact, I don't even have an iGPU. I'll have to report a bug against DWM most likely, and they'll have to investigate this.

Back in my day as long as you plugged the monitor into the dGPU, you were good.

I'm not sure how long those days are past, but I there have been countless major issues over the last 2 decades with both Nvidia and AMD. Here's an example of a longstanding Nvidia bug with ~200 comments: #649