Tearing on ATI 5xxx cards

[emergence]

I understand that there are no open tickets at ATI regarding certain specific kinds of tearing. I own a HD5850 card and wish to tally up the number of people suffering from the specific kind of tearing I'm suffering from. This post is targeted to 5xxx card owners.

There are two types of tearing I'm currently suffering from:

1) When dragging windows across the my screen(s), I can observe tearing across the window I'm dragging. The issue is greatly amplified if wobbly windows effect is enabled in compiz. Tearing when dragging windows also occurs when Compiz is disabled (tearing become more blocky). The type of tearing I'm referring to here appears to be moving from top to bottom while dragging the windows.

2) I have two screen that are connected to a dual-head HD5850. I'm using both DVI ports. They're both connected to two 23" LCD screens (same model). The EDID that appears in Xorg.0.log for both monitors is the same. On my second screen, if I play a video, run glxgears or keep on rotating the desktop cube, I get a single horizontal tear across the screen. Everytime I reboot my PC, the horizontal tear on my second screen changes position. Sometimes it's somewhere in the middle, sometimes it's at the top, sometimes it's at the bottom. The tear is very annoying.

I have tried a bunch of stuff to fix both of these tearing issues, none worked:
- enable/disable --sync-video via aticonfig
- enable/disable --sync-vsync via aticonfig
- enable/disable vsync in CCC
- enable/disable catalyst AI in CCC
- set AA to 4x in CCC
- enable/disable "reduce DVI frequency" in CCC
- enable/disable "usage alternate DVI" in CCC
- changed from extended desktop to two separate desktops in CCC
- moved my card from one slot to another.
- changed the power cables going into the card (650 PSU)
- flashed the card's bios with another firmware
- flashed the card's bios to statically set core clock and memory clock
- played with both monitor's refresh rates in xorg.conf
- even though compiz being disabled has no effect on tearing, I've set redirect full screen, unchecked autodetect resol, set refresh rate to 60.
- and much more...

BTW I'm on ubuntu 10.04 using catalyst 10.6.

I'd like to understand if the types tearing I'm suffering from is specific to me (my 5850 card or PC) or more widespread. If it's my HD5850 card that's messed up, then I need to RMA it. If other people are suffering from the exact issues I describe, then it definitely not an issue only affecting my card.

Thank you

[Kano]

The vsync force does not work using aticonfig, only via amdcccle. Try metacity --replace & or disable compiz in the menu. Best would be enable vsync and disable compiz so that it does not even start. the default effects are useless anyway. When you watch a video be sure you use -vo gl for mplayer.

[emergence]

The vsync force does not work using aticonfig, only via amdcccle. Try metacity --replace & or disable compiz in the menu. Best would be enable vsync and disable compiz so that it does not even start. the default effects are useless anyway. When you watch a video be sure you use -vo gl for mplayer.

Thanks Kano. I've tried this again, set metacity as my default window manager and I still get the two kinds of tearing I described. Tearing when dragging windows becomes blocky and fast. The gl output in video does not affect the horizontal tear I get on my second screen, that tear is more fundamental. Playing videos on my primary screen is fine (no tearing). If I play with the config and make my primary right and secondary left via config, the horizontal tear moves to the other screen, so my monitor/cable is not the problem.

[emergence]

Just remembered an important piece of information. Those two types of tearing I described earlier; they don't occur in Windows. Yup, everything is fine and dandy in Windows. So it can't be the HD5850 card itself, must be a software issue.

[emergence]

Because I've been focusing on these issues for the past month, I keep on forgetting to mention some things I've tried.

If I enable the compiz benchmark plugin under Extras in CSM, tearing when dragging windows is GONE. The frame rates I see when I do this is 59.xx-60.xx.

What this means to me is fglrx's vsync is broken, at least for me or more generally to 5xxx owners.

I'd love to hear from 5xxx owners out there.

Thanks

[Kano]

Did you try to switch to old accelleration mode?

When X is stopped:

aticonfig --set-pcs-str=DDX,ForceXAA,TRUE

[RealNC]

fglrx does not support VSync for the desktop. There is no way to have draw operations without tearing. What Kano is describing is VSync support for OpenGL applications.

[emergence]

Did you try to switch to old accelleration mode?

When X is stopped:

aticonfig --set-pcs-str=DDX,ForceXAA,TRUE

Just logged into via recovery mode and executed this and rebooted back to normal mode. It does not help:
**) fglrx(0): ATI 2D Acceleration Architecture disabled, using XAA

I was using 10.5 before this which had the new 2D accel. code disabled and I did suffer from the two types of tearing I've described.

[emergence]

fglrx does not support VSync for the desktop. There is no way to have draw operations without tearing. What Kano is describing is VSync support for OpenGL applications.

Isn't compiz an opengl app? Transforms the desktop into opengl?

The tearing I'm observing is so annoying that I can't just live with it. It's abnormal. There must be something wrong. I hear people that don't suffer from tearing, so there must something wrong with my setup/configuration. That's why I'd like to hear from other 5xxx owners if they're noticing the same issues I am. Unfortunately, there seems to be very few of them out there.

[Kano]

Maybe only on dual monitor setup? Currently i have got 4 pcs but only 2 monitors attached