video tears are common?

Anyone experiencing video tearing on a nvidia platform? I remember seeing video tearing on my HGL30 and m1330. However, I do remember not turning on vsync.

I am thinking of replacing my server's motherboard (itx) with a intel atom dual core/nvidia ion. I am currently using a amd/ati setup with the xf86-video-radeonhd driver as my server. I can't figure out how to enable vsync or something similar.

Jetway JNC81-LF | Phenom X4 9600 | OCZ 4 GB RAM | Western Digital/Seagate 500 GB RAID1 | AzenX BT-SC70BBL | Rosewill RS-MI-01 BK | Arch Linux x64

Do you think I need this much power for a samba's server/htpc? I am worried about being bottleneck by the atom processor if I switch.

Sorry, I know this is a notebook's forum but the notebook's linux side is much more active.

 

I don't personally experience video tearing with my nvidia chip, unless of course there's no hardware decoder (as is the case with BluRay).

The atom processor might possibly slow down samba authentications a bit, but that's just a guess.

 

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2009/09/20/make-compiz-run-smoothly-and-without-tearing/ or stop using Compiz altogether. If you're using KDE then turn off Kwin when playing videos. If you're using Gnome and decide to stop using Compiz then you can use Metacity.

 

Open source ati drivers do not have any 3d acceleration at this point. I enable a couple of setting for my card in the xorg file and change video playback to xv. The changes help a little bit and the tearing are tolerable.

I only use the xorg file to enable some of my card feature. I let hal and X do everything else for me.

EXAVSync does not prevent any form of tearing and made everything else lag.

 

You shouldn't need the AGPMode line. That might be causing some slowdowns because it's using AGP mode instead of PCI/PCIe mode.

I have an HD3200 playing full HD ([email protected]) video in my media center right now over HDMI out (no audio, just video), with no tearing, an Athlon X2 7750 Black Edition with only 2GB of DDR2 800 doing the decoding. This is my Device section:

Code:

Section "Device"
        Identifier  "Radeon HD3200"
        Driver      "radeon"
        Option      "ForceLowPowerMode" "True"
        Option      "ClockGating" "True"
        Option      "DynamicPM" "True"
        Option      "BusType" "PCIE"
        Option      "DRI" "on"
        BusID       "PCI:1:5:0"
EndSection

Your CPU should be fine. I'm guessing you're only seeing tearing on HD video? Unfortunately, you only have Nvidia at the moment for GPU acceleration of video decoding, so I did have to compile a multi-threaded mplayer to get HD video performing alright.

 

I should test out the xf86-video-ati driver and see if I get the same tearing. However, I lose hdmi's audio output which I need. I wonder if ati finally caught up to radeonhd (sound wise) yet?

 

Ahhh, so you do need HDMI sound. Yeah, radeonhd is the only one with that in it. It should be close to feature parity with the radeon driver.

Make sure you check out the bleeding-edge repos if you use Ubuntu: https://launchpad.net/~xorg-edgers/+archive/ppa

Major changes in the drivers have happened in the last few months, after 9.04 was released, and 9.10 hasn't come out yet.

 

My desktop plays all videos perfectly using xv with an Nvidia card. My intel netbook plays ≤DVD resolution videos without tearing too.

The laptop in my sig suffers with any video tho. FGLRX & a patched xorg-server offers the best performance but doesn't totally resolve the issue.

 

I can confirm that the setting below my xorg file (Section "DRI") help reduce any form of video tearing and xf86-video-ati do not have any tearing when you use the card without any setting enable (including Section "DRI"). Just for future reference for any ati users.

So far this has been tested on the RS780 chipset (Radeon HD 3200).