How To: An update on fixing screen-tearing on Linux with an NVIDIA GPU

OMG it worked!

An important point to note is that if you enable FCP, you might want to disable in game vsync. You'll encounter performance hits that can be pretty massive. In game vsync is no longer necessary.

Being able to set brightness or contrast using this option (and using it in the past with my old GTX 660ti) does not work, In game or on the desktop (Redshift). Not sure why this is, but I thought people should be aware. Unfortunately this makes it not an option for me.


Last edited by staticx27 on 12 January 2017 at 3:48 am UTC

Quoting: staticx27Being able to set brightness or contrast using this option (and using it in the past with my old GTX 660ti) does not work, In game or on the desktop (Redshift). Not sure why this is, but I thought people should be aware. Unfortunately this makes it not an option for me.

Likely a bug that needs to be reported to NVIDIA. I found that with this on, if you switch to another tty and back, redshift works again for that session until you reboot.

thx for fix.

Not working for me :(. *sadpanda*
I am using KDE (Kubuntu 16.04) and I have also tried setting to full redraw, activating VDPAU in player (it doesn't work in SMPlayer nor Firefox HTML5 player). I am quite annoyed by this - having nice (for me quite expensive) GPU GTX 1070, yet basic "feature" like vsync is broken :'(.

PS: Drivers version is 375.26.

I dont think you can manage to have a tearing free distro if you dont have a compositor enabled but if you have Plasma/KDE you dont need these settings , you just need 2 things.

have the compositor enable in everything
(there was a bug that compositor was going disable if you launched anything related to opengl and that was causing tearing and many other problems.)
To fix that you had to create a rule to force the compositor on
Windows Rules: Appearance and Fixes --> Force Compositing --> Force --> No
(dont know if this bug still happens or is fixed)

Then you have to add these lines on /etc/profile

gedit /etc/profile

export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1
export __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=1
export __VDPAU_NVIDIA_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=1
export __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=1
export KWIN_TRIPLE_BUFFER=1
export KWIN_USE_BUFFER_AGE=0


As you can see I dont have any of the settings mentioned enable and 0 tearing on everything I do.




Last edited by wolfyrion on 12 January 2017 at 7:03 am UTC

Thank you for your time to write down the tips. I tried it all, but it still behaves the same (I have enabled compositor).

I forgot to mention that I also tried:
export __GL_YIELD="USLEEP"
export __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1

But without any luck. Also tried opengl renderer in SMPlayer, older drivers, but nothing seems to make any change. I am beginning to think that it's broken just for specific GPU serie or model, or some weird combination of package versions, because I see so many posts how to fix it and how it is working for everybody :( .

The tearing is very visible when watching full hd video. Sadly it is working fine in Windows 10 (dual boot), so it shouldn't be a hw issue.

Quoting: monnefThe tearing is very visible when watching full hd video. Sadly it is working fine in Windows 10 (dual boot), so it shouldn't be a hw issue.

Which player? Use something that supports VPDAU, like mpv or Kodi. Or are you talking about Flash video on the web?

EDIT: Sorry, just noticed your earlier message. I remember having trouble with video tearing as well back before I started using Compton.


Last edited by tuubi on 12 January 2017 at 8:06 am UTC

Quoting: [email protected]An important point to note is that if you enable FCP, you might want to disable in game vsync. You'll encounter performance hits that can be pretty massive. In game vsync is no longer necessary.

Not quite right, on contrary, you may waste GPU/CPU cycles trying to render more frames than the monitor would allow; if the game has no vsync logic enabled, it is probably completely unaware of the monitor refresh rate, so it will render as fast as it can, and that could lead to jerkyness because the couple [compositor+monitor refresh] is not synced to game frames.

Indeed, one thing i noticed with compositors that do vsync (*AND* vsync is disabled in games) is that motion is jerky/jumpy in games (it is still smooth in movies because the fps is limited by the movie itself).

The workaround for that is:
Given "C" a compositor that provides a working vsync (nvidia forcefullcompositionpipeline, kwin with tearing prevention on, compton with vsync enabled and so on):

* If the game provides a working vsync, enable it and disable "C"

*If the game provides a non working vsync, enable it and leave "C" enabled; this is needed because even if you got tearing with the Game's non-working vsync option turned on, it will still be useful, because it limits the framerate to the monitor refresh rate; this helps "C" to stay in sync with the frames -> provide a smooth gameplay.

I've tested that on trine 2 and grid autsport.

My current setup is as follows:
Desktop Use:
- KDE/Plasma, compositor enabled but with "tearing prevention" disabled
- ForceFullCompositionPipeline enabled.
- vsync disabled in mpv (framerate is limited anyway by the movie)

Gaming:
- KDE/Plasma compositor completely disabled (to gain some fps)
but with frame limiter set to 75 (because my monitor uses 75hz).
Do that in ~/.config/kwinrc, add MaxFPS=75 in the "[Compositing]" section.
- Vsync option in game enabled
- If the games has a working vsync -> ForceFullCompositionPipeline disabled.
- If the games has a non-working vsync -> ForceFullCompositionPipeline enabled.

All the switches are bound to shortcuts alt-shift-f12 and alt-shift-f11
alt-shift-f12 comes with kdekwin and completely disables the compositor
alt-shift-f11 is bound to the following:
> cat ~/scripts/nvidia.compositionpipeline.switch.sh 
#!/bin/bash
killall aosd_cat
if nvidia-settings -t -q CurrentMetaMode|grep 'ForceCompositionPipeline=On' &>/dev/null ; then
    ~/scripts/nvidia.compositionpipeline.disable.sh &
    echo "FFCP=OFF" | aosd_cat -n "Sans Bold 15"  -x 0 -y 0 -p 0 -t 0 -b 255 -s 255 -d 10 -R yellow  -u 5000 &
    echo "FFCP=OFF" | aosd_cat -n "Sans Bold 15"  -x 0 -y 0 -p 2 -t 0 -b 255 -s 255 -d 10 -R yellow  -u 5000 &
        else
    ~/scripts/nvidia.compositionpipeline.enable.sh &
    echo "FFCP=ON" | aosd_cat -n "Sans Bold 15"   -x 0 -y 0 -p 0 -t 0 -b 255 -s 255 -d 10 -R "#99ccff"  -u 5000 &
    echo "FFCP=ON" | aosd_cat -n "Sans Bold 15"   -x 0 -y 0 -p 2 -t 0 -b 255 -s 255 -d 10 -R "#99ccff"  -u 5000 &
fi
###########
> cat ~/scripts/nvidia.compositionpipeline.disable.sh 
#!/bin/bash
sh -c "nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode=\"$(nvidia-settings -t -q CurrentMetaMode |tr -d "\n"|sed 's/.*:://'|sed 's/^ *//;s/ *$//'|sed "s/CompositionPipeline=On/CompositionPipeline=Off/g")\""
###########
> cat ~/scripts/nvidia.compositionpipeline.enable.sh 
#/bin/bash
sh -c "nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode=\"$(nvidia-settings -t -q CurrentMetaMode |tr -d "\n"|sed 's/ViewPortIn=/ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On, ViewPortIn=/g'|sed 's/.*:://'|sed 's/^ *//;s/ *$//')\""
Hitting a shortcut is faster than opening the nvidia's control panel, and the aosd_cat command is useful because it show the current FFCP (ForceFullCompositionPipeline) state.


Last edited by kokoko3k on 12 January 2017 at 4:27 pm UTC