Vertical Sync/Tearing

[Merkeon]

Hokay~
Recently after playing through F.E.A.R, i have noticed the detail of tearing/sheering. Not to sure if its exactly like that, so let me explain what it looks like; Lets say you have a plain picture, doesnt have to be anything, lets say a screenshot of WoW, now 1/4 the way down comming from the top; cut the picture left to right straight across, move the top half down maybe 1cm onto the bottom half, looks odd huh? Without Vertical sync i get something that looks like that on newer games, almost instant when i move, and when im still it doesnt happen, only when i turn fast. Now i thaught it was tearing or something, but im not sure anymore, since FPS in FEAR is constantly below 75 (My refresh rate) vertical sync shouldnt have an affect on it, yet it does. So im just curous if anyone else has ever had this problem, or knows what its called. Thank you for your time~
(PS: Video Card is 7800 GTX, RAM is 2GB OCZ, CPU AMD 2.2ghz Dual Core)

[GuyJantica]

It might have to do with the AMD dual core processor. I've heard that many games aren't yet really taking dual core into consideration when optimizing so it could be that the video info is being split between the two cores and your gpu is getting confused. I really don't know though. Something to consider.

-GJ

[Merkeon]

Actualy...thats a pretty good gues. Ill have to look into that, because F.E.A.R was suposedly made to optimize from Dual Core, ill set it to single core and see what happens.
UPDATE: K, its not Dual Core, i set affinity to only one core and still got the flickering =/

[GuyJantica]

Doh, oh well. Well, then I'd suspect its the video card itself. Does the card come from a third party manufacturer? Sometimes they are a little shakey. Good luck in addressing the problem. Sorry I wasn't of much use. :confused:

-GJ

[Blacki]

agree with Guy, F.E.A.R. is a newer game, and as such migh be pushing your card a bit. Id download a OC program to check its actual speeds mem/core then reference them to recomended. some companies OC them. another thing is open the case blow a fan directly on the card see if the additional cooling might stop it.

if its NOT a cooling issue,then Id try diffrent screen resolitions and such to see if its duplicated in all settings or one specific, IMO its either a cooling problem, or glitch fro resolution and/or some setting...

hunting down video bugs is a byotch but do it methodicly for all resolutions and 3D setting and youll find it.. im sure.. then bitch to the FEAR guys forms for a patch lol :)

just saw the card u have, you might need to try diffrent drivers, reload the factory defaults then tryfor the others, some games are happier with one or another.. angain a byoth to do but if its a game your gonna be playing awhile....

[tyrthyllanos]

Another thing to consider is the possibility that the game lowered your refresh rate, either as a default setting or due to a 'lowest common denominator' effect (i.e, automatic lowering to the highest refresh rate supportable under different graphics settings than your desktop). And, even when your refresh rate is high, you'll get tearing sometimes with quick movements; a sudden enough image shift my drastically drop your FPS for a split second, too short to be reflected in whatever you're using to track the FPS.

All that said, why not just keep Vsync enabled? If your FPS is generally above 40, it won't have any negative effect visible to the human eye, and it will get rid of the jarring tears... That's why the feature exists.

[Fozzik]

Refresh rate is usually a setting you can set within games... and it tends to default to 60Hz. As the previous poster mentioned, this is one possible cause I guess.

What you describe sounds exactly like tearing. No idea why it would happen if the frame rate is below the refresh rate consistently (besides the possibility above). I wonder if it's something weird with the video driver... *ponders*

[rabb1t]

I've found it can just happen. It doesn't seem related to the framerate.

If it happens just turn the V-sinc on. I had quite a few problems until I did that. I think it 'can just happen' with LCDs. (I didn't really have the problem all that often on CRT.)

[Fozzik]

Darn forum necros... I didn't even notice this was a really old thread. lol