Geforce 3 Ti Tearing...HELP!

[DREWxBLOOD]

I got Morrowind today and it runs fine, framerate-wise but there is horrible tearing going on constantly! It's extremely bad and I have no clue how to change this. THe only game I've had this problem with before was MoHAA but it wasn't nearly so severe. Is tearing a common problem with the GF2 Tis or am I the only one? As you can see by my specs below, My system surpasses the Recommended specs for both games so I have to conclude it's the video card. I'm running the latest drivers on the card. Would appreciate any input you could give.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

I forgot to mention, I've tested in every resolution available, with the same effect, telling me it's not like my system is overloaded or anything. The tearing is the same at both 640 and 1280. I've also tried changing the aperture size since I saw that mentioned on a website. Had it at at 128, dropped it to 64. I'm assuming dropping it anymore won't help anything

 

[BFG10K]

Turn on vsync and make sure that your monitor's refresh rate is as high as it can go while playing the games.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

So could this be caused by the refresh rate drop that comes with the Titaniums?

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

OK, i installed refreshlock and locked the monitor to 75hz. I enabled VSync always. I am still getting these issues. It's really starting to remind me of when MoHAA came out and people were having problems. Anyone else have any advice.?

 

[swatoa]

I've been to hell and back trying to figure out how to get rid of tearing on some apps (specifically Q3 engine games). I've tried nearly every single NVidia driver known to man but they do not fix the issue. The weird thing is, not including Q3 games, some games have tearing and some don't, even when they are running off the same exact graphics API. For instance, Flight Simulator 2002 has no tearing but Nascar Racing Season 2002 does. And Operation Flashpoint doesn't have tearing but it looks like it skips every other frame or something, it's weird. So I have three different issues pertaining to the same API.

Quake 3 is a different story. Every single game based off that engine has horrible tearing.

I was looking at videos from http://www.moh.ea.com , and there was tearing too. I easily noticed it within its 2 by 2 inch video size.

My guess is that there must be some various minor incompatibilities or something. PM me, I can try to help.

 

[Oreo]

For all Q3 based games all you have to do is write r_swapinterval 1 in the console and the tearing will go away. For Morrowind, atleast for me, it's got vsync enabled be default so I'd check your drivers and download some utility (like NVMAx) to be sure it's turned on. Also tearing has nothing to do with the graphics card or monitor only if it's on or off and the refreshrate (AFAIK).

 

[BFG10K]

So could this be caused by the refresh rate drop that comes with the Titaniums?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

i don't eitehr sometimes...I had been told that with the GF3 Tis, or maybe all GF3s, the refresh dropped to 60 in games and you had to use Refreshlock or something to fix it.\


Anyway, I think my problem here was a combination of VSync and very low framerates. I don't really have tearing anymore, but my frames are still sub-20

 

[Bucksnort]

The problem is the game, not your rig. Most all are having this problem with mrw and hopefully a patch will be out soon. Devs are aware of the problerms. You can visit moffowind forums for more info. The altered .exe patch that is on gamecopy helps quite a bit by getting rid of the safe disk crap improving fps some and quicker load times.

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

can someone post a definition of tearing? I think I know but just checking.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

The definition I've always used is basically dropped frames. Not really jerky frames, which is just slow performance, but when the computer is leaving out frames, which I always thought was due to video card glitches and incompatibilities

 

[Oreo]

Tearing has nothing to do with dropped frames. Tearing is when the videocard doesn't redraw the screen at the same time as the refresh rate of the screen which means that you get a picture that looks like it's cut up into different areas.

 

[DREWxBLOOD]

Oreo: so it ends up looking like one of those sliding jigsaw puzzles or what? I guess maybe I was descibing it really badly, but when I had it, it was kind of vertical strips across the screen and it would get really choppy at those times.

 

[Oreo]

Yeah, its like vertical strips I guess (or rather the screen is torn up in the horisontal plane) so the top of the screen is one frame "ahead" of the bottom of the screen.

 

[BFG10K]

I had been told that with the GF3 Tis, or maybe all GF3s, the refresh dropped to 60 in games

Yeah it does but that doesn't make a difference to your framerates unless you have vsync enabled.

don't really have tearing anymore, but my frames are still sub-20

So what you're actually describing is chopiness and this is very different to tearing.

 

[Peter]

Tearing happens when the graphics unit switches from one rendered frame to the next without waiting for the monitor's electron beam to reach the bottom of the screen. When the graphics frame is switched midway into one monitor frame, then the upper part will show the old graphics frame, and the lower part will show the new one.

This is particularly annoying when the graphics unit's frame rendering speed and monitor refresh rate are close together, but not synchronized.

Enabling VSync does this, synchronize the graphics card's frame flipping with the monitor's refresh cycle. It may make frame rate seriously worse in some scenarios. Like when your monitor runs 75 Hz and your graphics card manages 73 frames/second, then you'll get a new graphics frame displayed every other monitor frame, 37.5 fps. If your graphics card is fast (above 75 fps), you'll be capped to 75 fps, but in turn people on the screen don't get decapitated all the time.

regards, Peter

 

[Oreo]

Peter - I've tried to figure out how vsync really works for some time now and I've sort of come the conclusion you described. But in some games it's possible to get more than half the refreshrate but still not the full rate (42.5 vs 85 fps). There are games that I get for example 67 fps when I do have vsync enabled. Why is this?! Are there differences how directx vs opengl handle vsync?

 

[BFG10K]

The effects of enabling vsync are much more complicated than simply capping your maximum framerate to that of your monitor's refresh rate. One of the nasty sideeffects is that in actual fact your framerate will often be reduced to half of that of your current refresh rate.

The reason why this happens is because if the current frame is just a little late for the current refresh cycle, it has to wait for the next cycle before it can be drawn. This stalls everything and translates to lower framerates overall. Of course it's not always going ot be half and it depends largely on the rendering dynamics of the game and how and when your system is actually generating the frames.