Screen update rate

[Red Squirrel]

I don't really know how to word this, but I noticed that sometimes my screen in Linux does not update at the same time, like the top half updates before the bottom half. It's not always split down the middle, it seems to change. Does it on all 3 monitors. This is noticeable if watching a video in full screen where the entire scene is moving or scrolling through a web page. I'm really not sure when this started, but I just noticed it recently and now I can't unsee it.

OS is Linux Mint 17.1 KDE. Using proprietary Nvidia driver. The one called nvidia-340-updates. I used to be on latest but it randomly started doing really weird stuff like making my whole PC extremely slow, so had to revert.

Any ideas what would cause this? This is a decent machine, I really don't know why it would be doing this. CPU is a core i3 3.5Ghz and it has 8GB of ram. Should I put more ram? Video card is a GeForce GTX 750 Ti.

 

[Crusty]

NVIDIA is notorious for having tearing on Linux, most of the time you have to force enable vsync to get it working correctly.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/456355/have-tearing-no-vsync-in-movies-nvidia-proprietary-driver

 

[Red Squirrel]

Just tried that, no go. In fact I think it may have made it worse, but it's hard to tell, maybe I'm just noticing it more.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Decided to take a chance and go back to the latest Nvidia driver, that did not help the issue, but at least now I'm on the latest driver, it's not doing any weird stuff.

I also found something about editing xorg.conf, but can't seem to find that file at all on my system. Was reading and it looks like it's deprecated? That's nice but... what about all the tutorials that tell you to put something in there?

 

[ControlD]

You can create a xorg.conf file. I thought one was automatically created when running the proprietary Nvidia drivers, but perhaps I am mistaken on that.

I think you have to drop to a terminal and run:

Xorg -configure

And it will create a configuration file for you. I think it adds something on the end however like ".new". Anyhow, you can copy that into your X11 directory (without the .new).

At least that's what my notes tell me. This could have changed since I last did it.

 

[Jodell88]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.ph...th_GeForce_500.2F600.2F700.2F900_series_cards

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok so I tried this command and it seems to work:

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

But now I lost my two side monitors, they just went blank. They don't get detected any more either, it's like if they're not plugged in. How do I get them back?

Edit: Ok now it's really screwed up, I tried rebooting, but it didn't fix it, and it broke my task bar. Lost my start menu and the systray and clock is sorta there but very feint. Everything is all glitchy. I guess that was a bad idea to run that command without knowing what it does.

Scratch that, it does not seem to have actually worked. It just seems the issue is inconsistent so it's hard to tell when it's really gone. Was scrolling around the forum and noticed it again. It's almost like the top half of the monitor is updating faster than the bottom half, but sometimes it's even split in 3. I tried watching a youtube video and same thing. It seems to be getting worse as I never noticed this before and now it's hard to not notice.

 

[Red Squirrel]

So I managed to get my start menu back, oddly going "remove panel" actually restored it. As a side note, why does the pager widget always screw up after a reboot? I always have to reset it because the squares are too high, it does not line up properly.

But anyway so now that I got my start menu back I was able to get to the settings for screens, I see the two monitors as being grayed out but can't do anything with them. How do I get them back?

Teaches me to run commands I find on the internet, yikes, what a mess this is. I'm even debating on reinstalling, there's a few packages that are super out dated and I'm hoping if I upgrade to a newer distro I'll be able to get newer versions of those packages. I don't like installing from source as I lose the GUI integration, such as having a start menu entry, "open with" entry etc. I don't really feel like going through a format though :/ pain to setup everything again.

I'm even starting to wonder if I go back to the other way, using two Raspberry PIs (the 3 is out now too) and synergy for the side monitors, that way I don't have to worry about dialog boxes and stuff opening all over the place and other glitches associated with multi monitor. For a geek oriented OS I'm not sure why multi monitor, or video display in general is so glitchy in Linux. I mostly use the side monitors to have terminal sessions and other stuff I'm monitoring while doing all work on the centre so I can get away with not being able to move windows from one to the other.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok so turns out that command made me use the nouveau driver, so I was able to switch back to Nvidia, and then reenable the two monitors. I had to readd the task bars on each respective one and reorder them but other than that it was smooth. For the original issue, I think I may have fixed it, I was just googling further on "tearing" and "Vsync" as I did not know to google for those before it was mentioned, and found some stuff. I ended up going through the rabbit hole and found some other settings that seem to have worked.

In system settings, desktop effects, advanced, I changed "compositing type" to "OpenGL 3.1" and at the bottom there's an option for "Tearing prevention" I set it to full scene repaints. not sure whether or not this is actually what fixed it though, it was just a shot in the dark. I rebooted to make sure it sticks and it seems to be ok now. I feel like I might be speaking too soon though, so we'll see.

 

[Jodell88]

Ok so turns out that command made me use the nouveau driver, so I was able to switch back to Nvidia, and then reenable the two monitors. I had to readd the task bars on each respective one and reorder them but other than that it was smooth. For the original issue, I think I may have fixed it, I was just googling further on "tearing" and "Vsync" as I did not know to google for those before it was mentioned, and found some stuff. I ended up going through the rabbit hole and found some other settings that seem to have worked.

In system settings, desktop effects, advanced, I changed "compositing type" to "OpenGL 3.1" and at the bottom there's an option for "Tearing prevention" I set it to full scene repaints. not sure whether or not this is actually what fixed it though, it was just a shot in the dark. I rebooted to make sure it sticks and it seems to be ok now. I feel like I might be speaking too soon though, so we'll see.

There's no way the command could make you use the nouveau driver, since everything there is specific to Nvidia's official driver.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Maybe it just changed at reboot, I'm not sure, but that command immediately did mess everything up. The lack of xorg.conf file is odd though, I'm not sure where the settings are even stored. I don't like the idea of just creating one because I have no way of knowing if settings in it will even be honored or if wherever else stuff is stored might mess up etc...

But I got it working now anyway.

Interestingly I noticed the same issue going on my Windows machine too, not as noticeable in games but very noticeable in browser. Is this a nvidia specific issue? Did not really look further into how to stop it in Windows yet but I'm sure I'll find how.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Damnit, I thought it was fixed, but just noticed it started doing it again but now the line is more near the bottom, so at first I was not noticing it but now that I saw it, I can't unsee it. It's mostly apparent when scrolling web pages with lot of text.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ok now it's really screwed up. I got on my computer after work and the GUI is horribly unresponsive. When I click on something I have to click several times before it registers the click, something as simple as clicking a new tab in firefox requires a lot of effort for it to open or close. Even keyboard keys I have to randomly hit some more than once before they register. It's horrible. Why is Linux so glitchy like this?

I think I have no choice but to reinstall at this point. But before I do that, any ideas?

Edit: After some more reboots it seems fine now. Either way this is super sketchy. I think it's a combination of hardware and software, because often times this system takes a good 10 minutes just to POST. I did some quick google search and it seems other users of this motherboard/platform (Z97MX-Gaming 5) have had this issue before. It basically gets stuck into a very slow POST loop. A couple forced resets and it eventually goes on it's way. But not sure if the slowness within the GUI in Linux is related or not.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I switched off the Nvidia card for other reasons, so now I'm just on built on Intel, and this issue came back with full vengeance. Now it's a diagnal line right across the whole screen. VERY annoying. Anything I can do to fix this? Using Nouveau driver (I assume, unless there is another one that is built in).

It's especially apparent when scrolling forum sites or anything of that nature. Video playback or even moving a window around seems fine. But the problem tends to come and go.

Since there's no xorg.conf file it kinda limits most of what I've found on Google. There is no point in creating the file if it's not there, clearly the OS is getting it's config from somewhere else so the file probably won't even get read.