Graphics Tearing

Hey guys just got my m14x =D and I love it. I was testing the graphics card with the factory installed portal and noticed there was a lot of tearing. I am not sure if it is my settings or what but I turned off vsync and triple buffering. I am on the native resolution and also updated my drivers to the latest one with the hack .inf file. Can anyone please help me?

 

maybe try turning on vsync?

 

oh i thought it was recommended to have vsync off? or is it more like when you run less intensive games it's better to have vsync on?

 

I think vsync helps with tearing. try it and let me know.

 

yup that fixed it thanks! sorry, but i haven't really tinkered with graphics settings as my previous laptop was fairly outdated (vostro 1300 w/ 8400 gs) so if i see tearing in other games should i just turn on vsync? or does maxing out other settings help? because if i am right, the tearing occurs because the framerates are too high?

 

if you see tearing, certainly try turning on vsync as a first option. I don't believe maxing out other options help with tearing although I'm no graphics expert.

 

Tearing occurs because your graphics card renders frames that aren't in perfect time with your computer displaying them. The top half of your screen will be displaying a frame when your graphics card has your next frame ready. If vsync is off, your monitor will display whatever frames are ready right away -- meaning that it will have the bottom half of the screen display the new frame, even though the old frame is on the top half of the screen. The fact that your display is showing two different frames that don't completely match up creates the tearing effect.
If vsync is on, your graphics card waits for the monitor to finish displaying one frame before it passes on the next one. This means that your monitor is showing only one frame at a time.

In short: turning on vsync reduces tearing.

 

^ But can also reduce your framerate a bit, if you're averaging below 60FPS. Just something to keep in mind.

 

If a game is running at 45 FPS (and maintains that almost all the time), would it look better if I have the monitor set to 60Hz or 40Hz? How does vsync affect it? My guess is that playing at 40Hz with vsync on would make the game look as smooth as possible.

 

You don't want to mess with the monitor refresh rate. LCD monitors are designed to refresh only at 60 Hz (or occasionally multiples of 60 Hz), and deviation from that can have adverse results.

 

But the control panel has an option for 40 Hz, and it even defaults to 40 Hz when it's on battery.

 

I wasn't aware that laptop displays had that feature (I was commenting on LCD monitors and TV's). It would save some power so it makes some sense I guess. I suppose if you wanted to try you could set it to 40 Hz and turn on vsync. That should lock your FPS at 40, assuming you were getting > 40 to begin with. I doubt that would be any better than running at 60 Hz with or without vsync though.

 

My thinking is that on 60Hz you would have times where a frame would be put on the screen, then the monitor would be ready to display the next frame even though the graphics card (which isn't generating frames that quickly) wouldn't have a new frame ready yet. The monitor would have to display the previous frame again, leaving that frame on screen for 2/60th of a second, or 1/30th. With vsync off, you can get tearing. With vsync on, you'll get some frames that show up for 1/30th of a second and some that show up for 1/60th. I think that a stable 40Hz using vsync would look better than having almost half your frames being at 30Hz.

I've only even had this be an issue with F.E.A.R., which I'm not going to play until I finish Half Life 1 and 2. It'll be a while before I get to it, but I'll let you know how it works out.