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Jodi42

Member

From: India

Registered: 2025-06-09

Posts: 65

Screen tearing in video playback

I have nvidia 3070ti 8GB card in HP OMEN. I am experiencing extreme screen tearing and have tried the configs listed here https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA … ng_on_Xorg Still I am experiencing them. I am using nvidia-580xx-utils from AUR.

$ nvidia-smi
Thu Apr 30 03:44:06 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 580.142                Driver Version: 580.142        CUDA Version: 13.0     |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name                 Persistence-M | Bus-Id          Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp   Perf          Pwr:Usage/Cap |           Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                                         |                        |               MIG M. |
|=========================================+========================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 ...    On  |   00000000:01:00.0  On |                  N/A |
| N/A   43C    P5             20W /   40W |    1225MiB /   8192MiB |      0%      Default |
|                                         |                        |                  N/A |
+-----------------------------------------+------------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                              |
|  GPU   GI   CI              PID   Type   Process name                        GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                               Usage      |
|=========================================================================================|
|    0   N/A  N/A            1479      G   /usr/lib/Xorg                           745MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A            6472      G   /opt/Antigravity/antigravity             79MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A            7715      G   ...rack-uuid=3190708988185955192        180MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A          172044      G   alacritty                                18MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A          457189      G   .../calibre/bin/calibre-parallel         61MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A          765200      G   /opt/calibre/bin/ebook-viewer            61MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A         1143590      G   alacritty                                24MiB |
|    0   N/A  N/A         1409682      G   alacritty                                10MiB |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf
# nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings
# nvidia-settings:  version 580.142

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 580.142

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
    Option         "Xinerama" "0"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"

    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "BOE Technology Group Co., Ltd"
    HorizSync       257.0 - 257.0
    VertRefresh     60.0 - 165.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti Laptop GPU"
    BusID          "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    Option         "Stereo" "0"
    Option         "nvidiaXineramaInfoOrder" "DP-0"
    Option         "fmetamodes" "nvidia-auto-select +0+0 {ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}"
    Option         "SLI" "Off"
    Option 	   "AllowIndirectGLXProtocol" "off"
    Option	   "TripleBuffer" "on"
    Option         "MultiGPU" "Off"
    Option         "BaseMosaic" "off"
    SubSection     "Display"	
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

I am running on discrete GPU mode. I have hardware acceleration turned all. I use picom as compositor and am using xrender in backened.

5hridhyan

Member

From: Asia

Registered: 2025-12-25

Posts: 630

Re: Screen tearing in video playback

typo in ur xorg.conf, in the section "Screen" it should be `metamodes` (no "f")

about xrender, I mean it might be subjective but I don't think, it supports modern synchronization methods as effectively as OpenGL on "modern" NVIDIA cards... so try changing the backend to glx in your picom config, also ensure `vsync` is set to true

If you want to keep picom for shadows/transparency, it is often better to turn off ForceFullCompositionPipeline in xorg and let picom (with the glx backend and vsync = true) handle the sync, or NVIDIA Pipeline ON + Picom VSync OFF, your choice on which you find more stable

Last edited by 5hridhyan (2026-04-30 05:31:53)

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,972

Re: Screen tearing in video playback

Leaving aside the (bogus) metamodes for ForceFullCompositionPipeline the config is massive cruft anyway, please don't use nvidia-xconfig or nvidia-settings to generate a static server config that tries to use drivers that have not existed in decade*s*.

xrender cannot sync to the vblank signal (though picom has (had?) a funny feature that uses GLX to wait for the vblank and then redraw w/ xrender.

Video playback of what and with what? (If you're trying to play 24fps on a 60Hz output you'll get an occasional tearline or judder unless you have the player resample the video, try "mpv -vo=gpu --video-sync=display-resample 24fporns.mp4"
Also please post your Xorg log, https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg#General and try to quantify "extreme tearing", maybe what you're seeing is not actual "tearing" but some other rendering artifacts.
Do you get "extreme tearing" when running glxgears?

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Jodi42

Member

From: India

Registered: 2025-06-09

Posts: 65

Re: Screen tearing in video playback

I get most of tearing in playback of anykind be it in a website like this one https://www.arduino.cc/ , or in playback of video. I am using VLC in flatpak version.

cat  ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log | ts | curl --upload-file - 'https://paste.c-net.org/'

https://paste.c-net.org/NumberDolled

The log of xorg. I have 165Hz screen on laptop 1440p resolution.
I don't know if problem is called screen tearing or lack of vsync. I am not sure what to name it entirely. it is like above part and below part sort went haywire and shifted while rendering. I do know that frames do not display correctly and sometimes appear out of sync.

Right now to remove problem completely I run

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

$ nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"
Gtk-Message: 00:43:40.386: Failed to load module "colorreload-gtk-module"
Gtk-Message: 00:43:40.386: Failed to load module "window-decorations-gtk-module"

  Attribute 'CurrentMetaMode' (arch:0.0) assigned value
  'nvidia-auto-select+0+0{ForceFullCompositionPipeline=On}'.

after every boot whenever I see that happening. Right now it seems to have worked but many times video starts stuttering and loosing frames.
should I delete current xorg.conf?

Last edited by Jodi42 (Yesterday 19:14:09)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,972

Re: Screen tearing in video playback

nvidia-settings --assign CurrentMetaMode="nvidia-auto-select +0+0 { ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On }"

There's absolutely no trace of an nvidia GPU in the posted Xorg log but

May 02 00:35:15 [   154.013] (==) Log file: "/home/shobhit/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log", Time: Thu Apr 23 22:59:33 2026

it's also severely dated.

It's virtually impossible to get tearing w/ 165Hz but the output in the (dated) X11 log is  https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Variable_refresh_rate capable
Is that currently enabled?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Variab … _on_NVIDIA

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