My new Nvidia card has screen tearing in games
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:
- Wasteland 2 - Tearing when moving overhead view
- Cities: Skylines - V-sync DISABLED removes tearing
- The Fall - Tear in middle of the screen anytime you walk
- Dungeons 2 - Slight tearing when moving the view around
- The Talos Principle - V-sync ENABLED removes tearing
- Torchlight II - No tearing
- Team Fortress 2 - Slight tearing, some ghosting
- Borderlands 2 - V-sync DISABLED removes tearing
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.