KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

Soukyuu · 2015-02-17 17:22:17

Freshly installed arch with kde4, nvidia-340xx drivers (260gtx). Tried using every opengl version and Qt graphics system.
Effects still misbehave. For example, a notification popup will have a shadow around it. After the notification disappears, the shadow does not. Moving the mouse will result in the leftover shadow flickering.

The same sometimes happens with "active glow" effect.
And that's the weird thing: the artifacts can appear for a few notification windows in a row, then work fine again. I can't seem to detect a pattern.

Disabling all effects gets rid off the artifacts.
The GPU itself is working fine, I'm not getting any artifacts when playing videos with mpv, or using windows.
System is freshly -Syu'd. Full specs: see win8.1 system in sig.

Any idea what might be causing this? If you need more info, please tell me.

RJQ · 2015-02-18 17:30:27

I don't know if this would apply to the legacy driver, for the current one paired to kde I have to enable triple buffer, place the xorg.conf created by the nvidia settings in its place as 20-nvidia.conf or similar, and with the same settings squeeze as much as possible all the card power, only there I can have a smooth experience, (this doesn't has the optimal effect yet on kf5 plasma) I also found that some effects don't play well together, but that is mostly a hit-n-miss thing until you found what works best. I found most information by googling "kde nvidia" a while ago on different forums, hope it gives you a least a pointer.

Soukyuu · 2015-02-18 17:36:44

Thanks, I've read about enabling triple buffering on the wiki before, but that was for making vsync work. I'll try it out I guess.

However, it's kind of unbelievable I have to force it into high performance mode just to run KDE fluently when a 8600m GT has no issues whatsoever with the same driver...
Interestingly, my card is actually stuck in high performance mode despite powermizer being set to adaptive, I wonder if it's related somehow. I also know that on windows I had to stop updating the driver after 337.88, because of instability issues. Maybe I'll try downgrading the drivers next...

Last edited by Soukyuu (2015-02-18 17:37:28)

Primoz · 2015-02-18 17:42:56

I also have bunch of artefacts and various graphical breaks, like webages "tearing" while scrolling and stuff, but I have an AMD/ATI cad. I guess I'll google ati and kde or something to try and find a solution for this.
Oh also things got worse since plasma 5 update, but given it's still in development or something, I kind of expected that.

Soukyuu · 2015-02-18 18:02:54

Well, for ATI the solution seems to be downgrading: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=191962

On KDE5 I'm getting plasma restarts now and then, but no artifacts - this is with the 8600m GT though, not the 260GTX.

RJQ · 2015-02-18 20:19:46

The thing is that is more about the software interaction with a specific driver and card than the power of the card itself, a least for kde4 and some cards there is a fix, in Gnome I just couldn't use it anymore (with a weird bug where it blurs all the letters just about any time) and on kf5 the smoothness is not totally there with some artifacts and freezes mostly while using chromium, I've read that some people's kde on intel is working wonders. For me, I just stick with kde4 until it dies, and hopefully kf5 stuff gets ready then. I forgot to mention that I also use the ck repo for the kernel and driver, but I can't tell if that makes a substantial difference with kde performance, for the rest it does.

Last edited by RJQ (2015-09-24 17:43:48)

BlueDarknezz · 2015-02-18 20:45:27

I had artifacts and glitches (weird browser scrolling behavior) with the radeon driver and Plasma5 too...didn't notice it like that with KDE4.
For me the solution was to switch from OpenGL GLX interface to EGL.

You can try the same with KDE4: Wiki

Last edited by BlueDarknezz (2015-02-18 20:49:34)

Primoz · 2015-02-19 09:36:26

I think I solved it. I changed in AMD/ATI proprietary driver settings from display scaling to graphics scaling.
Well, I still have artefacts with Chromium, but I had those before KWIN started freaking out.
(Oh, there's a slight possibility that it's actually due to KWIN update, but I doubt it, as I set those things before I logged off, and didn't restart KWIN so yeah)
Anyway, it's fixed now.

Soukyuu · 2015-02-19 18:49:43

I think I solved it as well. Disabling the X Screen 0 -> OpenGL options -> Allow flipping option seems to get rid off all artifacts.
Here's hoping the option will stick after reboot...

Btw, switching to openGL ES broke blurring for me, it has displayed other parts of the screen instead of the blurred/translucent taskbar. Tripple buffering didn't solve things either.

edit: spoke too soon. The artifacts appear again, but a bit differently. With flipping enabled, they were flickering, with it disabled they are persistent. Looks like the buffers are not being cleaned up properly or something.

edit2: I think I figured it out. It seem that setting animation speed to either "fast" or "very fast" breaks the shadow effect. All other settings work fine. I guess I should open a bug for kwin...

Last edited by Soukyuu (2015-02-19 19:08:34)

Soukyuu · 2015-02-19 19:56:07

Opened a bug here, also was able to verify it's also happening on my other ATI-based PC.

Arch Linux

#1 2015-02-17 17:22:17

KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#2 2015-02-18 17:30:27

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#3 2015-02-18 17:36:44

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#4 2015-02-18 17:42:56

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#5 2015-02-18 18:02:54

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#6 2015-02-18 20:19:46

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#7 2015-02-18 20:45:27

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#8 2015-02-19 09:36:26

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#9 2015-02-19 18:49:43

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

#10 2015-02-19 19:56:07

Re: KDE4/KWin: graphic effects artifacts

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