Screen tearing at desktop with Eyefinity

[aviphysics]

This thread is a little dusty but the issue is still the same so I thought I would resurrect it.

I noticed this problem a while ago but it didn't really bother me until I started playing DeadSpace where the combination of screen tearing and flickering lights make it totally unbearable to play.

It seems like a display port splitter device might solve the problem but I have know idea which one to get or if that would even work with eyefinity.

[LordJuanlo]

As far as I know, there is no fix for this problem if you are using mixed outputs. AMD changed something with the 6xxx series that was working fine with the 5xxx series (my 5870 didn't have tearing and I'm using the same monitors), and today the 7xxx cards have the same behavior.

I have 'moved' the tearing to the left monitor and I'm fine with it when gaming.

[aviphysics]

I don't know why but I seemed to have mitigated the problem by setting the right monitor as primary.

Initially it was set to the left monitor which resulted in really bad tearing (I wasn't paying full attention at the time so I don't know if the tearing was also on the left monitor and right monitors). I tried the middle monitor and that fixed it for the middle monitor but the other two had problems. Than moving it to the right monitor fixed it (or at least vastly reduced it) for all three.

Because of where my system is, it is kind of a pain to see which is hooked up to the DP connection and I don't really remember. I wonder if the order in which monitors are positioned and which monitor is set to Primary don't have something to do with why some people report the problem and some don't.

Very Strange.

[Ristogod]

Originally Posted by spyre

There is nothing you can do about it other than using all monitors on the same connectors (Displayport) or buying monitors that don't have that issue.

So why don't they sell cards with at least 3 displayports on them as standard? Why do we have to wait for special 6 display cards that cost a ton more.

I've got 3 monitors that all support native displayport. Yet I can only connect 2 using displayport. How ****ing stupid is that?

[muzz]

Originally Posted by Ristogod

So why don't they sell cards with at least 3 displayports on them as standard? Why do we have to wait for special 6 display cards that cost a ton more.

I've got 3 monitors that all support native displayport. Yet I can only connect 2 using displayport. How ****ing stupid is that?

REALLY stupid

[LordJuanlo]

Originally Posted by Ristogod

So why don't they sell cards with at least 3 displayports on them as standard? Why do we have to wait for special 6 display cards that cost a ton more.

I couldn't agree more. The 5xxx/6xxx cards (3 outputs) should have been made with DP connectors only and adapters for DVI/HDMI. On the 7970s (4 outputs) they could have implemented 3 displayports and 1 dvi/hdmi, and supply a couple of adapters.

[NWR_Midnight]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

I couldn't agree more. The 5xxx/6xxx cards (3 outputs) should have been made with DP connectors only and adapters for DVI/HDMI. On the 7970s (4 outputs) they could have implemented 3 displayports and 1 dvi/hdmi, and supply a couple of adapters.

Sapphire supplies ALL adapters needed to hookup 4 monitors to 1 7970.

[caveman-jim]

Originally Posted by Ristogod

So why don't they sell cards with at least 3 displayports on them as standard?

Because OEM's requirements drive the reference designs, not niche market consumer needs.

Some AIB's make non-reference boards with different output options, takes them a while to get them out there after launch though.

Fingers crossed the MST hubs will actually appear this year and this will be a moot point.

[KlaxonHale]

Would 2 DisplayPort driven monitors and 1 HDMI driven solve the tearing or does it apply to anything other than DisplayPort? I have tearing on 1 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI but one DisplayPort monitor remains free of any distortion. I have a feeling that it may be a cheap adaptor that's causing at least 1 problem. Any ideas?

[Pitty]

Originally Posted by KlaxonHale

Would 2 DisplayPort driven monitors and 1 HDMI driven solve the tearing or does it apply to anything other than DisplayPort? I have tearing on 1 DisplayPort and 1 HDMI but one DisplayPort monitor remains free of any distortion. I have a feeling that it may be a cheap adaptor that's causing at least 1 problem. Any ideas?

No, the card is the problem, it cannot be fixed.

The only way to fix it is to have a card that outputs from 3 of the same ports.

i.e

3 x mini display ports
3x dvi
3x hdmi
3x display port

The reference cards do not have this.

[LordJuanlo]

If you don't care about Aero, disabling it will remove the Eyefinity tearing in Windows desktop. But you will get tearing in games anyway.

[Ristogod]

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Because OEM's requirements drive the reference designs, not niche market consumer needs.

So give them adapters.

Originally Posted by caveman-jim

Fingers crossed the MST hubs will actually appear this year and this will be a moot point.

What is MST hubs?

Edit: Never mind. I went searching for it. Basically it's an adapter that allows multiple connections to a single displayport connection. Nice! What I really liked was that in the future monitors could build this in and allow for monitor to monitor daisy chaining.

So some questions then. Does the 7000 series cards support using this feature? Why haven't these been released yet? Any idea when they might appear? Any other good info you could point me to?

[Higgy10]

Originally Posted by Ristogod

So give them adapters.




What is MST hubs?

Edit: Never mind. I went searching for it. Basically it's an adapter that allows multiple connections to a single displayport connection. Nice! What I really liked was that in the future monitors could build this in and allow for monitor to monitor daisy chaining.

So some questions then. Does the 7000 series cards support using this feature? Why haven't these been released yet? Any idea when they might appear? Any other good info you could point me to?

The mst hubs have been pimped since the 5000 series days so who knows when they will actually arrive.

[Ristogod]

Originally Posted by Higgy10

The mst hubs have been pimped since the 5000 series days so who knows when they will actually arrive.

Great. So in other words it isn't ever happening.

[Bitey]

ok I have had this screen tearing for quite a while in eyefinity, well not always I only get it if I change any of my gpus clocks, slight increase or decrease always introduces flickering/tearing. So I have just not OC'd

However I was reading about tweaking system timers in windows 7 to fix CTD with bf2 and have found that incidentlay enabling HPET in bios and running "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true" at the command prompt and rebooting has actually fixed all flickering/tearing with my eyefinity displays.

ref
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=19335129


PS the flickering has occurred with eyefinity using DVI and also with 3 native display port monitors

Seems forcing windows to use a system wide timer may stop timing discrepancies for a lot of things .

[spyre]

Yeah that does seem to get rid of the tearing, no idea why though.

[noko]

This sounds like very good news if it can be duplicated by others with similar issue. In my bios I have HPET setting as either disabled or enabled, no 32bit or 64bit option. When I use that command in Win7 it says something that it is not accessible, do I have to do this with safe mode command prompt?

[Bitey]

i would think an admin command prompt, right click on command prompt and select run as administrator.

it should not need safe mode

[Pitty]

Originally Posted by Bitey

ok I have had this screen tearing for quite a while in eyefinity, well not always I only get it if I change any of my gpus clocks, slight increase or decrease always introduces flickering/tearing. So I have just not OC'd

However I was reading about tweaking system timers in windows 7 to fix CTD with bf2 and have found that incidentlay enabling HPET in bios and running "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true" at the command prompt and rebooting has actually fixed all flickering/tearing with my eyefinity displays.

ref
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/sho...php?p=19335129


PS the flickering has occurred with eyefinity using DVI and also with 3 native display port monitors

Seems forcing windows to use a system wide timer may stop timing discrepancies for a lot of things .

Didn't work for me.
I have HPET set to x64 in bios and used the "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true command

i have a 7970 eyefinity with 2 monitors on miniDP and 1 on HDMI, my right monitor still has tearing when i drag a window.

[LordJuanlo]

I have also enabled HPET and it didn't change anything, left monitor still tears

[Ristogod]

Originally Posted by Pitty

Didn't work for me.
I have HPET set to x64 in bios and used the "bcdedit /set useplatformclock true command

i have a 7970 eyefinity with 2 monitors on miniDP and 1 on HDMI, my right monitor still has tearing when i drag a window.

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

I have also enabled HPET and it didn't change anything, left monitor still tears

Same here. It did nothing for me.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by spyre

There is nothing you can do about it other than using all monitors on the same connectors (Displayport) or buying monitors that don't have that issue.

I do have 3 displays of the same brand and model and they all have either DVI or display port imput options.....How about actually releasing HD7970's with 3 display port outputs, rather than having 2 mini Display ports + DVI option?


It would make life so much easier, and the only solution is to continue waiting for that Display port hub to finally get released, and fix the issue for good....

[LordJuanlo]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

I have also enabled HPET and it didn't change anything, left monitor still tears

Ok, now I'm shocked. I have just installed the latest beta drivers AMD has given me and the tearing is gone, in both desktop and games. I'm about to cry "tears" of pure happiness. I don't know if this is a combination of HPET and the new drivers, but today I'm the happiest Eyefinity user in the world.

I'm trying to find out if they have done something in those drivers regarding Eyefinity and the tearing, as far as I knew, this was impossible to fix via software. But I believe my eyes, and there is no tearing on any monitor today.

[shadow001]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

Ok, now I'm shocked. I have just installed the latest beta drivers AMD has given me and the tearing is gone, in both desktop and games. I'm about to cry "tears" of pure happiness. I don't know if this is a combination of HPET and the new drivers, but today I'm the happiest Eyefinity user in the world.

I'm trying to find out if they have done something in those drivers regarding Eyefinity and the tearing, as far as I knew, this was impossible to fix via software. But I believe my eyes, and there is no tearing on any monitor today.

When is the official 12.5 set due anyhow?( we are getting to the end of may afterall).....Ah never mind they're going to be based on the 8.97 set, not the 8.98 one.

[LordJuanlo]

AMD just told me that the beta drivers I'm using don't have any fix for the tearing problem using different outputs, so my guess is that it got fixed by the combination of HPET and the installation of the driver. Maybe doing the HPET fix and reinstalling any driver will do the trick, I will try it in a different Windows partition tomorrow.

But I still can't believe the tearing problem has been fixed after all those months.

[LordJuanlo]

Tested it in another partition with a fresh Windows installation with just Intel inf drivers and Catalyst drivers. I didn't touch HPET settings:

- Official Catalyst 12.4: tearing on Eyefinity
- Beta drivers: NO tearing on Eyefinity

I created a system restore point before installing any Catalyst drivers to change drivers easily and I can confirm this: on my system, the beta completely fixed tearing on my DP monitor.

Please, can the other betatesters try it and let me know if it works for them?

[Lurk]

hey, found this thread linked from another forum, guess the wwworld is a small place after all

I'm interested in knowing how things are going with the tearing issue, since I might be taking the plunge for Eyefinity on my 6950 Crossfire setup, and one monitor would be connected to mini-dp via active Sapphire adapter.

I'd be glad to hear from Eyefinity users here.

[LordJuanlo]

Tearing in Eyefinity with mixed outputs has been fixed with Catalyst 12.6 beta drivers

[The PyroPath]

Originally Posted by LordJuanlo

Tearing in Eyefinity with mixed outputs has been fixed with Catalyst 12.6 beta drivers

Makes one kinda wonder if it was just a software problem all along. There were all these stories going around about it being a hardware limitation, but if that is the case, how can drivers fix this? Software problems in games I can see happing with new drivers, but working around a hardware problem often is either impossible or a very complicated and time consuming job which ends up being a hackjob which "almost" eliminates te problem but never makes it disappear completely...

[Pitty]

It's not fixed for me.

I'm talking about the stupid line than runs horizontally across monitors 1 and 3.

When you drag a window around you can see it.

I tried 12.6 and and now using 12.xx after a clean install of windows.

Using 2 x minidp, and 1 x DVI.