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The desktop display is fine, watching videos is okay, but when I load up games I get constant screen tearing. I'm running 14.04 64-bit on an Intel i5-2500k 3.30GHz, 16GB RAM, 2TB Barracuda 7200 RPM, w/ dual monitors @1080p Samsung SyncMaster PX2370.

I recently upgraded my video card from a Nvidia 560Ti to a Nvidia 970. As soon as I loaded up my first game I noticed screen tearing. I tried enabling and disabling v-sync but it did not help. Actually v-sync can make it worse for some games! see below

This For my 560Ti I had installed the 346.47 binaries from Nvidia's site. When v-sync did not work, I upgraded my driver to 352.21. I followed this guide from the part where it tells how to install binaries. This still did no good.

Later I figured out I could have probably just updated my current binaries. Also if I rundkms statusit lists nvidia 331.113 driver. However I do not know how to purge the driver from DKMS and the binary fails to pull into DKMS.

I feel like my first step should possibly be purging the Nvidia drivers from Kernal and DKMS, then trying the install again. Since I've only been using Linux for about 3 years now I'm hesitant to blame Nvidia's drivers, but am inclined to think it is my own incompetence.

Any suggestions on how I might fix this problem?

Games Tested:

  1. Wasteland 2 - Tearing when moving overhead view
  2. Cities: Skylines - V-sync DISABLED removes tearing
  3. The Fall - Tear in middle of the screen anytime you walk
  4. Dungeons 2 - Slight tearing when moving the view around
  5. The Talos Principle - V-sync ENABLED removes tearing
  6. Torchlight II - No tearing
  7. Team Fortress 2 - Slight tearing, some ghosting
  8. Borderlands 2 - V-sync DISABLED removes tearing
Arkanoid
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3 Answers3

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Two steps that solved the problem for me on my gtx 960 on Kubuntu 14.04

1st try adding this to your xorg.conf file @ /etc/X11/

Section "Screen"

Option "metamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceFullComposition = On}"

If that works only sometimes or distorts clarity on internet or game video then add this and it should make a big difference and hopefully permanent fix.

Section "Screen"

Option "TripleBuffer" "1"

You can check out my research here-askubuntu.

Community
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boydo
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When 14.04 came out, I ran into (among a host of other issues) screen tearing with my nvidia card; Try going into the control panel and setting the underscanning to 10% or so - in my case, changing the scanning at all caused a screen flicker followed by a perfect picture. Hopefully that fixes it, but I had to do it at every reboot because for some reason, xorg.conf (with the underscanning settings) was being deleted at every boot. Never found an answer to that one.

This weekend, after getting sick of driver bugs and constantly resetting underscanning, I moved up to an amd card which works just fine in 14.04 using the vesa driver. Just food for thought.

snurfle
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  • can you explain more clearly what is the control panel and where is this underscanning option? – JoKeR Jul 20 '15 at 18:02
  • sorry to leave you hanging... ctrl+alt+t or select terminal from the launcher, type 'nvidia-settings' and hit enter. Select the second item on the left (display coinfiguration, iirc) and the window will give you a slider about 3/4 of the way down. Sliding this and hitting 'apply' is what fixed it for me first time every time. I'm at work, so I'm doing this from memory, so i may be off a bit. – snurfle Jul 20 '15 at 18:19
  • still no clue what do you mean by underscanning? I'm just trying to help the OP reading your answer because even I can't fully get it. I can't find this underscanning as you referred option in display configuration tab... there's only: selection, configuration, resolution, mode name, panning... (in this tab) – JoKeR Jul 20 '15 at 18:30
  • maybe yo mean quality factor in OpenGL Settings? – JoKeR Jul 20 '15 at 18:34
  • this shows the adjustment, although the current version looks slightly different. I had been using it because my tv/monitor had no option to disable the overscanning, fortunately nvidia and amd both give a way to set it in the OS. – snurfle Jul 20 '15 at 19:13
  • well I guess it depends on driver's version then. So it will not work for everybody. – JoKeR Jul 20 '15 at 19:56
  • I was using the latest (afaik) just 3 days ago and it looked almost the same (the value box was above the slider rather than beside it) but I don't think the functionality was dropped; at least not over the past 2 years. Hmmmm... OP? Any luck? – snurfle Jul 20 '15 at 19:59
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I finally found a bug report here: that describes the problem and a fix.

Open a terminal and type:

gksudo gedit /usr/share/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/50-xserver-command.conf

Then add the -bs option to your lightdm config

[SeatDefaults]
# Dump core
xserver-command=X -bs -core

However, as I found out on the Nvidia forms from Axfelix's post this does not always remove the screen tearing. The bug report is here. You'll have to disable 'unredirect fullscreen windows' option in Compiz as well. That finally seems to have fixed the problem.

Arkanoid
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