Nvidia 6200 TC Tearing

[struggler]

Hello,
I have a Nvidia 6200TC video card but I'm having tearing images in UI2 with alpha blending while watching movies.
Previously I had a 6600 LE and after trying everything without success I decided to buy a 6200 as recommended in several forum topics.

I have tearing only with alpha blending. Could it be configuration? Perhaps some xorg.conf fine tunning?

[totallymaxed]

Hello,
I have a Nvidia 6200TC video card but I'm having tearing images in UI2 with alpha blending while watching movies.
Previously I had a 6600 LE and after trying everything without success I decided to buy a 6200 as recommended in several forum topics.

I have tearing only with alpha blending. Could it be configuration? Perhaps some xorg.conf fine tunning?

Hmmm... well our experience is that the 6200TC will work without tearing at 720P & 1080P but only if your MD is configured for UI2 + Overlay.

Andrew

[struggler]

Hello,
I have a Nvidia 6200TC video card but I'm having tearing images in UI2 with alpha blending while watching movies.
Previously I had a 6600 LE and after trying everything without success I decided to buy a 6200 as recommended in several forum topics.

I have tearing only with alpha blending. Could it be configuration? Perhaps some xorg.conf fine tunning?

Hmmm... well our experience is that the 6200TC will work without tearing at 720P & 1080P but only if your MD is configured for UI2 + Overlay.

Andrew

Hello Andrew,
Sadly I'm having tearing with my 6200TC graphic card. Have you made any tweak on xorg.conf or in Weadmin interface?
Is it possible to share your xorg.conf configuration?

Thanks

[totallymaxed]

Hello,
I have a Nvidia 6200TC video card but I'm having tearing images in UI2 with alpha blending while watching movies.
Previously I had a 6600 LE and after trying everything without success I decided to buy a 6200 as recommended in several forum topics.

I have tearing only with alpha blending. Could it be configuration? Perhaps some xorg.conf fine tunning?

Hmmm... well our experience is that the 6200TC will work without tearing at 720P & 1080P but only if your MD is configured for UI2 + Overlay.

Andrew

Hello Andrew,
Sadly I'm having tearing with my 6200TC graphic card. Have you made any tweak on xorg.conf or in Weadmin interface?
Is it possible to share your xorg.conf configuration?

Thanks

Hi Again,

When we configure nVidia cards we generally do not do any manual changes in xorg.conf (unless the the physical screen requires something because its a brand we have not met up with before). In the case of the 6200TC it is using s 'stock' xorg.conf generated automatically and that has had no hand tuning whatsoever.

What is the spec of the motherboard/processor/ram of the machine the 6200TC is installed in?

Andrew

[struggler]

Andrew,
Thank you for your attention on this.
My system is a Hybrid and runs with the following hardware specs:
- ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe
- 1GB RAM
- 160GB internal IDE HDD
- AMD Athlon(tm) X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2300
- 2x Gigabit Network Interfaces
- Nvidia 6200TC XFX
- Hauppage PVR150
- Fiire Gyro Remote
- USB UIRT
- 1TB External USB HDD

I've already tried a Nvidia 6600LE and a 6600GT with no different results, almost giving up.

Thank you

[gazlang]

I have also had tearing problems with both a 7300GT (512mb) and a 7600GT (256mb DDR3). Tearing only occurs in UI2 w/ alpha, not UI2 masked.

I also have an ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe, 1GB RAM and x64 AMD Athlon.
I wonder if it's something to do with the motherboard? PCI-e transfer bus?

[totallymaxed]

I have also had tearing problems with both a 7300GT (512mb) and a 7600GT (256mb DDR3). Tearing only occurs in UI2 w/ alpha, not UI2 masked.

I also have an ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe, 1GB RAM and x64 AMD Athlon.
I wonder if it's something to do with the motherboard? PCI-e transfer bus?

Hmmm... thats a valid point. When I get a chance I'll do some testing of that theory.

Andrew

[struggler]

I have also had tearing problems with both a 7300GT (512mb) and a 7600GT (256mb DDR3). Tearing only occurs in UI2 w/ alpha, not UI2 masked.

I also have an ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe, 1GB RAM and x64 AMD Athlon.
I wonder if it's something to do with the motherboard? PCI-e transfer bus?

Hmmm... thats a valid point. When I get a chance I'll do some testing of that theory.

Andrew

Andrew,
Which is the Mother Board you're using?

JD

[purps]

Gazlang, I think you're on to something when you say it's a PCIe issue.

My core is a 3 - 4 year old PC with a fairly old AGP graphics card (not sure of the other details of the top of my head as it's my housemate's PC). We're actually using it as a hybrid, as I use it to play media on our lounge projector. This has always had alpha blending enabled, and I have never seen any tearing. The projector is connected via S-video (PAL or NTSC resolution, it's a big old thing).

I have just built another media centre which is currently in my room, working as a standalone system. It sports a MSI K9AGM3-FIH motherboard, AMD64 x2 processor, 2 Gb RAM, and a nVidia 7100GS graphics card, connected to a TV via S-video also (PAL-I). With this machine, I experience the dreaded horizontal tearing whilst using alpha blending.

I'm no expert, but from what I have read in other posts, I really do think it's an PCIe issue. Has anyone ever experienced tearing using an AGP card? If anyone out there is clever enough to sort this out, and if any extra information about my core machine would be helpful (specs, log files, etc), please let me know. I know this issue can be sorted by turning off alpha blending, and one would assume that this is the reason nothing is being done about the problem, but you KNOW that LinuxMCE looks soooo sweet with alpha blending turned on  I'll be putting up with the tearing for now.

MM

[colinjones]

The primary reason nothing has been done is that most have assumed it is a problem in the nvidia drivers which are closed source, and nvidia don't really want to talk about them. So there's not much we can do.

It could be a simple timing issue rather than performance, in which case different video cards could easily exhibit the problem or not irrespective of their relative performance.

What resolution are you using? Sounds like SD - being so low compared with the HD resolutions this could take it out of the timing issue range. Problem is it is very hard to predict with that type of issue, esp as I can't even be sure it is the issue!

My confusion is still the "Z" shape of the tearing I have seen, and others have reported. I haven't seen any suggested responses to my posts on this... very difficult to explain. The tear really ought to be a horizontal line. When I gaze at it for a while when it is quite pronounced I can see a very clear horizontal tear from the left to near the centre of the screen, then the tear heads down and back to the left diagonally, then back to horizontal and over to the right of the screen. Do you see anything like this?

[purps]

I don't have anything that's HD - everything is either PAL or NTSC, so very low resolutions. Both the TV and projector are connected to the respective graphics cards via S-video. I have swapped the projector and the TV before - the result is the same; tearing on the PCIe nVidia card, but not a bit of it on the AGP nVidia card.

I'm not seeing this "Z" tear either that I've heard about (I have read your previous posts on this, very peculiar). I have horizontal tearing at approximitely 1/4 of the way up the screen, and also 1/4 of the way down the screen, leaving about half of the screen in the middle unmolested. This happens in MythTV, and when watching videos (DVDs and DivXs) through the orbiter.

It's a real shame that LinuxMCE has this problem, and I can completely understand why some people can't be bothered with it. Not me though, it's better than the alternative... How come you don't see the tearing if you just do an ordinary Ubuntu Gutsy install and play a video, yet you see it on the LinuxMCE install? That IS Gutsy, is it not?

MM.

[colinjones]

Yes, its Gutsy - its probably to do with how the interface uses OpenGL for the screens, overlays etc. The KDE desktop (normally) isn't doing stuff like that.... but this is all guess work as I don't know how the LMCE UI is coded nor how the nvidia drivers handle the differences.... but I'm sure that if it was easy to resolve it would already have been... even if it was difficult to resolve, if it were not hidden in how the driver handles the interface then it would probably have been resolved as well. That's why I get the impression that the driver is intimately involved, as it is closed source so the devs would have to reverse engineer it to find out exactly why it is happening.

[Zaerc]

I don't have anything that's HD - everything is either PAL or NTSC, so very low resolutions. Both the TV and projector are connected to the respective graphics cards via S-video. I have swapped the projector and the TV before - the result is the same; tearing on the PCIe nVidia card, but not a bit of it on the AGP nVidia card.

I'm not seeing this "Z" tear either that I've heard about (I have read your previous posts on this, very peculiar). I have horizontal tearing at approximitely 1/4 of the way up the screen, and also 1/4 of the way down the screen, leaving about half of the screen in the middle unmolested. This happens in MythTV, and when watching videos (DVDs and DivXs) through the orbiter.

It's a real shame that LinuxMCE has this problem, and I can completely understand why some people can't be bothered with it. Not me though, it's better than the alternative... How come you don't see the tearing if you just do an ordinary Ubuntu Gutsy install and play a video, yet you see it on the LinuxMCE install? That IS Gutsy, is it not?

MM.

Because LinuxMCE is not the same thing as Ubuntu Gutsy.  And if you see tearing at SD already then there is likely something wrong with your setup.

[totallymaxed]

I have also had tearing problems with both a 7300GT (512mb) and a 7600GT (256mb DDR3). Tearing only occurs in UI2 w/ alpha, not UI2 masked.

I also have an ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe, 1GB RAM and x64 AMD Athlon.
I wonder if it's something to do with the motherboard? PCI-e transfer bus?

Hmmm... thats a valid point. When I get a chance I'll do some testing of that theory.

Andrew

Andrew,
Which is the Mother Board you're using?

JD

we have numerous MD's & Cores (I915/I945/I965mostly) running 6200's of various flavours... my home system used to a have a 6200TC but that died a few weeks back so now I have a 7300GS (in a I945).

Andrew

[purps]

Zaerc,

I don't agree. Not only does it work fine when I turn alpha blending off, but I have an ancient machine with an ancient AGP graphics card that has no problem whatsoever. If it was my setup, how would I even go about correcting something like that when it works fine with alpha blending off?