[help wanted] Having constant lag spikes on games with Asus Flow Z13 AMD Ryzen AI MAX+ 395

[MrPistachios]

Pre-flight checklist

• I have searched existing issues and this is not a duplicate.
• I have read the Contributing Guidelines.
• I have verified the issue is reproducible with the latest available CachyOS kernel.
• I have tried to reproduce the issue on Arch Linux's linux kernel.

Upstream / vanilla kernel check

I tested with a vanilla/upstream kernel and the issue ALSO reproduces there (upstream bug — please report upstream)

Kernel variant

linux-cachyos (EEVDF, Clang)

System information (cachyos-bugreport.sh)

https://paste.cachyos.org/p/a0914c8.log

Manual system information (if cachyos-bugreport.sh is unavailable)

I did not try the arch kernel, I didn't know how but will do so now and report back

Bug description

When I play a game like Arc Raiders, Starfield, or Valheim (opengl or vulkan) I get consistent lag spikes every couple of seconds.
The issue happens when I am not using my eGPU.
The issue didnt use to happen maybe about a month or so ago as I used to play games fine during lunch, when the issue started happening I mostly ignored it then tried doing a fresh installation to see if that would fix it but it hasn't

Things Ive tried:
bore kernel
fresh installation
lower resolution and graphics settings
changing amount of vram allocated to the gpu in bios settings

Steps to reproduce

get into a game and wait a few seconds, games like oxygen not included and doorkickers do not have this issue, they seem to be simpler games and not like 3D like starfield etc

Expected behavior

Not have constant lag spikes

Actual behavior

games start to lag spike after a few moments in game

Video showing lag spikes in Starfield, Valheim with Vulkan, and Valheim with opengl
https://youtu.be/0KRHL_PPHdU

Logs / stack traces

Additional system information

cachyos-bugreport.log

valheim.log

mangohud log that shows when the lag spikes happen highlighted in red
Mangohud_Starfield_2026-04-08_13-15-01.ods

Mangohud_Starfield_2026-04-08_13-15-01_summary.csv

[MrPistachios]

ok so I was able to install and test the arch kernel and it had the same issue so I'm not sure where to go from here, Im not sure if this is a kernel issue or a AMD driver issue maybe

cachyos-bugreport.log

[MrPistachios]

I disabled SMT in BIOS and did a couple minutes of testing and did not see the large spike in lag, I will do some more testing when I can later. Hopefully this works for me