any good articles on screen tearing?

[toyota]

a few buffoons on another forum are claiming tearing only happens above refresh rate. they can link to articles that somewhat support their claims yet I cant find hardly anything thats clear on tearing happening at any framerate. I have encountered this a few times over the years and its quite frustrating to have nothing good to link to.

I even tried making a video showing tearing at just 30 fps but I was accused of faking it and/or that it was only happening for me so something must be borked on my end. lol

 

[bystander36]

The only thing I've been able to find that explains it is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing

Screen tearing is a visual artifact in video display where a display device shows information from two or more frames in a single screen draw.[1]

The artifact occurs when the video feed to the device isn't in sync with the display's refresh. This can be due to non-matching refresh rates—in which case the tear line moves as the phase difference changes (with speed proportional to difference of frame rates). It can also occur simply from lack of sync between two equal frame rates, in which case the tear line is at a fixed location that corresponds to the phase difference. During video motion, screen tearing creates a torn look as edges of objects (such as a wall or a tree) fail to line up.

The only problem is it doesn't specifically mention that it can happen at lower refresh rates, but if your FPS are lower, you are still out of sync with the refresh rate. They did single out that even with equal frames and hz, tearing can also occur (usually/always occurs in all reality). That is another one a lot of people get messed up with.

Edit: unfortunately, this seems to be a little off on prevention:

Ways to prevent video tearing depend on the display device and video card technology, software in use, and the nature of the video material. The most common solution is to use multiple buffering.

Most systems use multiple buffering and one or both of these two methods:

As you very well know, multiple buffering alone doesn't fix tearing, though they said most systems use it with v-sync, so it seems a bit conflicting there.

 

[toyota]

yeah it seems I am kind of screwed here find something worth linking to. even Nvidia made it seem like tearing only happens above refresh rate when they came out with adaptive vsync.

what I dont get is how oblivious these people have to be. its one thing to say you dont see tearing at all but to say you dont see below refresh rate but you do above it is just odd.

 

[bystander36]

This is one of those myths that won't die.

 

[bystander36]

Here is one other thing that mentions it, but I find it complete BS in the way that they say it, as in my experience, at 60hz, tearing is still pretty unbearable at below 60 FPS (or above), but then I'm used to 120hz.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/16/nvidia_adaptive_vsync_technology_review/#.VHgMZfldV8E

Note that tearing can technically occur if the framerate doesn't exceed the refresh rate, but it is much less likely to be noticed.

 

[toyota]

lol even linus says at 1:46 in his video that tearing only occurs when you go above refresh rate. really what the heck is wrong with people?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAiPmazmR_M


I find tearing much more noticeable at lower framerates at super high framerates I barely even see it in most cases.


and here is my video at locked at 30 fps with obvious tearing. I show the framerate at the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QXm3Yg73q0

 

[Cerb]

Linus does some nice stuff here and there, but he's such a nVidia and Intel shill, sometimes, too...

Anyway, if they can't be bothered to run settings up high enough for tearing at under 30 FPS, and claim you're faking a video, why bother? Find a game where performance sucks with light or shadow maxed out, and turn v-sync off. Ta-da.

 

[bystander36]

I suggest you tell your buffoons to turn off V-sync, and put a FPS cap at their refresh rate, or half their refresh rate, then play a game with lots of action. Anyone who can't notice the tearing under that circumstance is blind.

 

[ocre]

Tearing absolutely happens without v sync and at any framerate.

Its just massively multiplied the higher your frame goes over the refresh rate. If your at the refresh rate or under it, it can be really hard to detect most of the time. Where when your over the refresh rate, it can become so severe that it cant be missed. If your under the refresh, the two halves usually stay pretty close.

So one can easily say that tearing doesnt become a problem until your fps exceeds the refresh rate. This is when the two halfs start having a huge spread apart.

As for the op question. Maybe you can find some detailed FCAT articles with a lot of pictures in games at or below refresh rates. That could offer you proof in your claims

 

[toyota]

Tearing absolutely happens without v sync and at any framerate.

Its just massively multiplied the higher your frame goes over the refresh rate. If your at the refresh rate or under it, it can be really hard to detect most of the time. Where when your over the refresh rate, it can become so severe that it cant be missed. If your under the refresh, the two halves usually stay pretty close.

So one can easily say that tearing doesnt become a problem until your fps exceeds the refresh rate. This is when the two halfs start having a huge spread apart.

As for the op question. Maybe you can find some detailed FCAT articles with a lot of pictures in games at or below refresh rates. That could offer you proof in your claims

well actually I see the exact opposite. Tearing is way way way more noticeable to me at lower frame rate because it's like a slow tear that just ripples through the screen. At high frame rates it's like a really quick tear that's almost unnoticeable in many games. So technically there may be more tearing at higher frame rates but it sure is a whole lot more noticeable at lower frame rate because the tears seems to stay there longer.

 

[SoulWager]

If you're not using v-sync or variable refresh, you get tearing: If your framerate is much higher than refresh rate, you get several small tears on every refresh. If your framerate is half your refresh rate, you get a big tear every other refresh. If your framerate is equal to refresh rate, you still get tearing, because there's no control over where in the scan the monitor will be when you flip the new frame forward.

If you're using v-sync, you don't get tearing, because the gpu waits for the monitor to finish scanning this frame before flipping to the next frame.

If you're using variable refresh, you don't get tearing, because the monitor waits for the gpu to finish a frame before starting it's scan.

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Yeah, without vsync you're tearing, but if you go well over the screen refreshrate you'll have multiple tearlines on screen all the time, which is of course much easier to spot.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

You're right it is a myth.

Tearing occurs at ALL frame rates. That includes frame rates below your refresh rate, frame rates above your refresh rate and even if you exactly lock your frame rate at the refresh rate, it will still happen.

The only difference is the amount of tearing per frame on average you'll get. With frame rates<refresh rate you'll expect a tear line through your refresh approximately every nth frame where n gets higher the lower your frame rate. When you have the frame rate=refresh rate you'd expect 1 tear per 1 frame on average. With frame rates>refresh rates you'd expect n tears per refresh where n gets larger with larger frame rates.

Hence tearing is more noticeable at higher frame rates, but it occurs at ALL frame rates.

Tearing is when the frame buffer flips to display the new rendered frame but this occurs during a refresh cycle, the only thing that can stop this is if you enable vsync, this ensures the frame buffer flip can only occur after a refresh has finished and before the next has started. If the next frame hasn't finished rendering between these times the old frame is displayed again a 2nd time and this repeats until the new frame is ready. This is why your frame rate often goes down by 1/2, 1/3rd 1/4th etc

This is a myth that has persisted for literally decades, the only people that still argue for it are those ignorant people who don't have a functional understanding of how vsync works, once you understand what is occuring you'll know how/when tearing occurs.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Screen tearing happen at any FPS if the monitor is not in sync with the GPU(s). This usually happen with crappy monitors or bad optimized games. I know that COD advanced warfare has a lot of screen tearing. GSync and freesync were created because of this issue. Vsync can also help a lot sometime but not always.

Toyota, you get in fight in which other forum? Can you post a link of the thread with those "buffons"?

 

[Black Octagon]

Could link them to this I guess: http://paulbakaus.com/tutorials/performance/the-illusion-of-motion/

Edit: or Page 21 of this: http://books.google.be/books?id=RFF...+happens+at+any+refresh+rate&output=html_text

Then again, please consider that there's more meaningful ways to spend one's time than fight with faceless strangers on internet fora.

Oh wait...

 

[bystander36]

It is interesting how some say lower FPS has more noticeable tearing and other say the opposite.

The reality is, both have reasons for that opinion. Higher FPS will give more tears, as you get exactly 1 tear per frame, but lower FPS causes the offset between two successive to be larger.

Anyways, At 120hz, tearing isn't hugely noticeable, though I see it. At 60hz, tearing is horrible to me, regardless of FPS.

 

[Daedalus685]

Hmm, incompetent 'experts' asserting the wrong truth is about the most annoying thing I can imagine.

I don't think you are going to find a lot of articles on it though.

Try the FCAT tech demos though. A lot of them have graphics showing how the technique works that include images of where the tear occurs.

http://techreport.com/review/24553/inside-the-second-with-nvidia-frame-capture-tools/3

That one shows an image of a tear mid screen that, while not stated as lower than refresh FPS, is what it would look like.

I'd like to think that by explaining what a tear is they would change their mind, but internet... I can't really fathom how one could not understand that tears occur at all FPS unless they have no idea what it actually originates from (phase difference between refresh and GPU fps, regardless of the frequency of either)

I too find it far more noticeable at lower fps. It is very bad during the currently 30fps locked cut scenes in dragon age inquisition (on my admittedly lackluster 770) due to just how different adjacent frames can be.

 

[toyota]

It is interesting how some say lower FPS has more noticeable tearing and other say the opposite.

The reality is, both have reasons for that opinion. Higher FPS will give more tears, as you get exactly 1 tear per frame, but lower FPS causes the offset between two successive to be larger.

Anyways, At 120hz, tearing isn't hugely noticeable, though I see it. At 60hz, tearing is horrible to me, regardless of FPS.

with a 120/144 hz screen the kind of tearing you get from panning around is greatly reduced. it still has the same exact level of tearing with explosions and flickering lights though. you can see in that linus video how bad that 120 hz screen is tearing when its just sitting there.

 

[bystander36]

with a 120/144 hz screen the kind of tearing you get from panning around is greatly reduced. it still has the same exact level of tearing with explosions and flickering lights though. you can see in that linus video how bad that 120 hz screen is tearing when its just sitting there.

While there, it is still reduced. With twice as many refreshes, tears are removed in half the time, or show half as many at any given time. It's still true that tearing never disappears with high refresh rates.