[g0dders]

Hi there,

I've recently built a little HTPC box running XBMC, but I'm having problems with tearing at higher resolutions.

I'm running an Athlon 4850e and 2gb RAM in a Gigabyte MA78GM-S2H board, using the integrated graphics (which is supposedly a Radeon 3200).

It's running a fully patched Hardy install (with the latest ATI driver from EnvyNG), and a fresh install of XBMC from today's SVN (2008/07/07). Compiz is disabled.

I'm running at 1920x1080 at 50Hz via HDMI (50Hz is necessary to keep my TV happy, it seems), although I've also tested at 60Hz via VGA too to no avail. I'm getting rather nasty tearing with anything 720p or above, even with vertical sync enabled in XBMC.

Anyone got any ideas how I can fix that?

As a sidenote, I'm not having much luck with 1080p content, lots and lots of dropped frames, stuttery audio, etc. The "killa sampla" is pretty much unplayable. If anyone knows of any magic buttons I can press to speed that up, I'd be most grateful (although I'm beginning to think I just don't have the CPU power for it, although neither of my CPU cores hit 100%, so maybe there's something else going on there).

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated!

[KeithB]

Have you confirmed that you get the same playback with no tearing using something else like mplayer for example?

From past experience, the ATI drivers aren't particularly great and could result in tearing themselves

[Gaarv]

I've struggled with my MA78GM-S2H and tearing as well. Here's how I fixed it.

It was really simple and yet took me weeks to figure out whats wrong... Tried composite, vga, hdmi and many drivers install (packaged, envy, ...)

- Install ATI drivers, following this guide :
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_...tion_Guide

- when on the desktop (I use kde), use the ati config panel to change vsync to max (its disabled by default ! ). I didnt find any way to do it from terminal... nothing out of the ordinary in the xorg.conf either.

- just to be sure, use vsync enable in Xbmc as well

[g0dders]

Gaarv: Sounds good, I'll give that a go in a bit. Thank you very much!

By the way, I know it's a long shot, but have you managed to get 1080p working reliably?

[Gaarv]

Forgot to precise : use Method 2 (manual install catalyst 8.6)

I dont have many 1080p files yet. I just tried a sample and had mixed results : sometimes perfect and times Xbmc just crash and exit. Could be the file though.

I've been so busy trying to fix the tearing lately that I didnt tried it extensivly but I plan to

[g0dders]

Hmm, I tried the Ubuntu default fglrx driver, the one that EnvyNG installs, and also following the manual installation as Gaarv kindly recommended. Unfortunately I'm still getting tearing, even with vsync enabled everywhere.

The manual install was a bit of a non-starter as it resulted in underscan over HDMI which I was unable to fix (with the envy and default restricted drivers, changing the refresh rate to 50Hz sorted that out, but no longer with 8.6)

Anyone got any tips?

[Gaarv]

Sorry to hear it didnt fix your problem, strange since we have the same hardware... Except fort the TV I suppose.

Did you tried "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" or "sudo aticonfig --initial -f" in between tests to reinitialize your xorg.conf ? (make a backup first)

[User 29008]

hey gaarv,

I am on almost the same HW as you are, same Gigabyte Board, 4850e X2 CPU though. Right now I am running a PCIe NV 8500 card for hdmi out, though I would prefer onboard ATI if I can get it to work ok.
Didn't use it at all yet for XBMC. So you are saying that the standard Ubuntu restricted ATI driver is a no-go? Should I stick to ATI Cat 8.6 with a manual install right away?

boba

[Gaarv]

The real issue is, despite my numerous tries, that I couldnt find a way to enable vsync by any way besides the ATI control panel from a graphical desktop like KDE or Gnome.

To my knowledge (even after spending hours over weeks trying to find it, reading forums and all), no drivers besides the manual install of catalyst 8.6 offer you this control panel, so you cant enable vsync and thus have tearing all over.

The manual install isnt much of a hassle following the guide :
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_...yst_8.6.29

I really recommand it if you want to solve this issue.

[soder]

Hmm, I tried the Ubuntu default fglrx driver, the one that EnvyNG installs, and also following the manual installation as Gaarv kindly recommended. Unfortunately I'm still getting tearing, even with vsync enabled everywhere.

The manual install was a bit of a non-starter as it resulted in underscan over HDMI which I was unable to fix (with the envy and default restricted drivers, changing the refresh rate to 50Hz sorted that out, but no longer with 8.6)

Anyone got any tips?

I've installed the 8.8 drivers to, and I have underscan at 720p and 1080p resulutions over DVI-HDMI.

When using VGA at 1024x768 I get no underscan but perfect pixelmapped.

What can I do?

/Söder

[kowalski]

I've installed the 8.8 drivers to, and I have underscan at 720p and 1080p resulutions over DVI-HDMI.

When using VGA at 1024x768 I get no underscan but perfect pixelmapped.

What can I do?

/Söder

Try this:

Code:

sudo aticonfig --set-pcs-val=MCIL,DigitalHDTVDefaultUnderscan,0

PS: Looks like there are no more tearing with latest 8.10 driver?

[soder]

Try this:

Code:

sudo aticonfig --set-pcs-val=MCIL,DigitalHDTVDefaultUnderscan,0

PS: Looks like there are no more tearing with latest 8.10 driver?

I got tearings with beta 8.11. Not as much as before I think, but they are there. But now I havnt change the slider in ATI config center like before, so I guess the tearings will be no problem...

EDIT
About the tearings. With my last installation of XBMC and Ubuntu, I hade the slider in ATI control center to tha maximun right, for quality. Now it is somewhere in the middle and I got tearing. Shall I move the slider to the right, or shall I try something in xbmc insted?

EDIT2
Tried with xbmc, only on video playback. I saw them
Tried with ATI Always on, and video playback in xbmc. Saw them
Tried with ATI always on, and disable in xbmc. Maybe its because of Im updateing my library during watching?
Had no problem when "always on" in ATI before in Ubuntu 8.04 and Catalyst 8.9.

/Söder
/Söder

[SleepyP]

thanks to people's advice in other threads here I solved my tearing issue.
At this time I'm using ATI's 8.10 proprietary driver with Kubuntu 8.10. Once I got the ATI stuff installed and working, I went into the ATI control panel, found the slider control for Vertical Sync and set that all the way to the right. Then in XBMC I set the Appearance>Screen> vertical sync to "use driver setting" or whatever its called. Poof: no horizontal tearing!!!!
Also would like to point out I'm using the 8.10 driver package that some people have problems with. You CANNOT use the old 8.9 package with the old 8.04 versions of Ubuntu / Kubuntu, because (I think) they updated the X server.
I mostly followed this guide when installing, and it worked:
http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubuntu_...tion_Guide

[soder]

I now run xbmc final on Ubuntu 8.10 ATI 8.543 and the slider the right.

Much less tearings..

/Söder

[sayza]

What worked for me on Jaunty with 9.8 ATI driver. Go to Catalyst Control Centre a select Always On for Vertical sync in 3D/Preferences section. However, when I first tried this the X server froze. Then I updated (flashed) the motherboard BIOS (Asus M3A78-EM) to the newest revision and the freezing problem (and tearing) was gone.