NVIDIA Linux Driver Now Does GL_EXT_x11_sync_object

[dan77g]

Well I would certainly hope you're right - it's frustrating to have to deal with such irritations on this kind of hardware.
I assume that your findings are based on similar scenarios ie watching 700mb size Xvid encodings, typical

I really don't know what could be peculiar about my setups, after all. They are just stock, vanilla up-to-date Ubuntu installations. And this issue has not been restricted to to any one distribution ....

Nonetheless, there's no harm in trying a Debian install. I'll try some problem files with an installation as not.sure outlines (thanks!)... maybe the wireless 802.11n will even work reliably as well ... and the X composite extension won't freeze the machine ...

[dan77g]

Well I would certainly hope you're right - it's frustrating to have to deal with such irritations on this kind of hardware.
I assume that your findings are based on similar scenarios, ie watching 700mb size Xvid encodings, typical medium-res Flash videos on Youtube ... I have a feeling that the tearing occurs less with DVD-quality vob rips, but it's certainly not eliminated.

I really don't know what could be peculiar about my setups, after all. They are just stock, vanilla up-to-date Ubuntu installations. And this issue has not been restricted to to any one distribution ....

Nonetheless, there's no harm in trying a Debian install. I'll try some problem files with an installation as not.sure outlines (thanks!)... maybe the wireless 802.11n will even work reliably as well ... and the X composite extension won't freeze the machine ...

[johnc]

And I know it's only a rough metric, but nonetheless:
Google hits from the PAST MONTH for "linux nvidia tearing" ---> 66,600
Google hits from the PAST MONTH for "windows nvidia tearing" ---> 52,900

As the person responsible for 66,000 of those Google searches, I can tell you that I definitely feel your pain with the tearing issue. It is annoying as hell. I really lucked out and was able to pinpoint it down to compiz being the turd in the toilet for my case. Otherwise I was going to go crazy with those side-pans.

[brent]

Various issues with tearing definitely exist, especially when an OpenGL compositing manager is in use and/or when multiple displays are attached. As far as I understood, these sync fences reliably allow avoiding tearing, but they have to be used by the compositing manager. It doesn't happen automagically.