tearing

Soldato
Joined
8 Sep 2003
Posts
23,168
Location
Was 150 yds from OCUK - now 0.5 mile; they moved
Hi all my games suffer from tearing.

Running a SyncMaster 913N (8ms) with a 2900XT card

I ahev to enable v-sync for every game

Is there any negatives of y-snyc except the max FPS of 60?

Also is it cos my monitor aint up to the job?
 
I am using the exact same TFT and, as far as I can tell, I don't notice any issues with 'tearing' whilst using my 8800GTS in any game, except when I had to enable v-sync in the Bioshock demo as I then noticed it at the start without it.

I wonder if enabling v-sync would help you....?
 
vsync should be on for a TFT anyway as they dont refresh like normal crts do. Some TFT's like the VX922 from Viewsonic have a 75hz refresh, does it really bother you? and if it does sadly its back to crt :(
 
Doesn't bother me, just wondering if i lose any performance using v-sync

And with the BioShock demo, I agree tearing was rife!

I also get tearing on WoW, Doom 3. and GRAW2
 
All screens have tearing when v-sync is off and they always will, nothing to do with your particular screen. Turning v-sync on does incur a framerate hit though. You can use something like DXTweaker to force tripple buffering, and then the framerate hit from v-sync will be mostly eliminated. It's worth doing because tearing is pretty horrible.
 
All screens have tearing when v-sync is off and they always will, nothing to do with your particular screen. Turning v-sync on does incur a framerate hit though. You can use something like DXTweaker to force tripple buffering, and then the framerate hit from v-sync will be mostly eliminated. It's worth doing because tearing is pretty horrible.


DXtweaker, does it work for DX10 and Vista?
 
You're probably only getting so much tearing because the 913N has an older 8ms TN panel.

If you got one of their newer models rated for a 2ms response time (931BW, 206BW, 226BW, 226CW) things should be a lot better.

Those are all widescreen though, if you wanted to keep the same aspect-ratio as your current monitor you'd want the 931F or 931C.
 
DXtweaker, does it work for DX10 and Vista?
That I don't know. Don't even know if it works for Bioshock since the damn thing (Bioshock) is crashing on me the whole time so there doesn't seem much point in testing framerates.

I did use it for Fear though and it gave me no horrible tearing and very nearly the same framerate as v-sync off.

Playing Bioshock makes me wish I'd never sold my CRT :( Tearing on LCDs is horrible. My brother is playing it on a CRT and the extra detail it can pick out in dark areas blows away my 2007WFP sadly, plus the black depth is so much better. For some games an LCD just can't cut it.
 
Last edited:
You're probably only getting so much tearing because the 913N has an older 8ms TN panel.

If you got one of their newer models rated for a 2ms response time (931BW, 206BW, 226BW, 226CW) things should be a lot better.

Those are all widescreen though, if you wanted to keep the same aspect-ratio as your current monitor you'd want the 931F or 931C.

Like I have noted I have the exact same panel and I do not notice any tearing at all. :)
 
Is there any negatives of y-snyc except the max FPS of 60?

Two main ones:

1) If your frametime increases above 1/60s, then your framerate will actually halve down to 30fps. If it drops under 30fps, then it will go down to 15fps. As mentioned, triple buffering can help since it splits things up by 3. I.e. the boundaries would be 40fps and 20fps.

2) Vsync causes a slight mouse lag which can be problematic if you are playing a fast paced 'twitch' FPS for example.

If you must use Vsync then maybe look at increasing your refresh rate to 75hz if possible. The good news is that with a 2900XT you hopefully won't suffer much from 1).
 
As mentioned, triple buffering can help since it splits things up by 3. I.e. the boundaries would be 40fps and 20fps.
Actually it does a bit more than that. As you say with v-sync on, if the game consistently fails to draw a frame within 1/60th of a second, the framerate will drop to 30fps, that's because having missed a vertical retrace, there's nowhere for the game to start drawing the next frame, since the frame that's just been finished is still sat on the backbuffer waiting to be copied to the framebuffer which can't happen until another retrace comes round. So the game sits there twiddling it's thumbs. With tripple buffering though, you have 2 backbuffers, so there's always a backbuffer available for the game to draw the next frame on. So with tripple buffering you don't get any hard limits like 40 fps / 20 fps, the game could run at 57 fps just fine. In theory it should give you the same framerate as with v-sync off, with the one exception that the framerate can't ever go over 60 fps, whereas it can with v-sync off.
 
Back
Top Bottom