Terrible vsync problems with nVidia

[johnzxr]

Hi,

I am making my first post on this forum as I have searched hundreds of posts related to this, but none of them have been able to resolve my issue.

As per the title I am getting the vertical sync problems that a lot of people have had with Intel graphics cards, except I am using an nVidia card. This is my setup:


Gigabyte GA-73PVM, nVidia 7100, core 2 duo 2.5Ghz CPU, 2GB RAM

Windows 7rc7100 (I know Windows 7 is unsupported etc, and I appreciate that, but if anyone has any suggestions that may help other than changing O/S that would be much appreciated)

XBMC version Babylon 9.04 connecting to 42inch Sharp LCD TV through HDMI @ 1080p or 720p or an number of lower resolutions.


So I have the issue where the TV seems unable to sync correctly to the signal, I can get it pretty close (so the moving black vsync bar moves very slowly up the sceen). I have to manually choose the refresh rate to 50Hz to achieve this, everything else causes the flicker to be much worse.

I have tried enabling / disabling the sync to vertical blank option, when this is enabled the flicker is much worse.

Im new to XBMC so I'm hoping that there is some fairly simple solution that I can try out, any help appreciated.

Thank

John

[ashlar]

What's the "moving black vsync bar"?

[bobo1on1]

Make sure your tv is the primary monitor, and make sure triple buffering for opengl is off.

From your post I wonder what the actual problem is, when you don't have vsync you get tearing, that's it, nothing else.

[johnzxr]

The vsync problem causess a large horizontal black bar to move from top to bottom on the screen.

[LaTropa64]

Horizontal black bar? You mean tearing, like this:

http://i41.tinypic.com/x0y88y.jpg

[johnzxr]

Thanks for the example, but no.

I know what tearing is, this is a bar approximately 6 inches in width, solid black with some jaggedy edges, I was trying to find an example and cant, although I could post a picture when I get home later.

[johnzxr]

bobo1on1,

Thanks for the suggestions, I will check the opengl settings.

I will make a video of the problem and post it as I seem to be bad at describing the problem.

It just occured to me where you see this effect all the time, if you use a video camera to video a computer / tv screen unless someone has taken the time to syncronise the video camera frames with the tv refresh rate you get that horizontal black bar moving up / down the screen when you see the video playback. It is just like that.

Thanks for all the help.

[johnzxr]

The first few seconds of this video demonstrate the effect, except I dont have a old CRT TV, its a hi-def LCD as described above.

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/1102053

[Doggen]

I had that exact problem, drove me nuts...its a windows 7 related problem...or should i say its a Nvidia driver issue with windows 7, make sure you have the latest nvidia driver (i use 185.81 for win7 x64) and it works like a charm, if youre having trouble finding a suitable driver check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocards---NVIDIA-GeForce-Windows-7_c37.html... i see now that i'm a bit outdated :P ....anyways make sure you try using the one i have OR later....report back.

/Doggen

note:
I found this problem to disappear when doing XBMC in windowed mode, how about you?

[Neku]

Horizontal black bar? You mean tearing, like this:

http://i41.tinypic.com/x0y88y.jpg

I have somthing like that at top of the screen smetimes what i can do with it?
I have intel 4500HD gfx

[johnzxr]

I had that exact problem, drove me nuts...its a windows 7 related problem...or should i say its a Nvidia driver issue with windows 7, make sure you have the latest nvidia driver (i use 185.81 for win7 x64) and it works like a charm, if youre having trouble finding a suitable driver check here http://downloads.guru3d.com/Videocards---NVIDIA-GeForce-Windows-7_c37.html... i see now that i'm a bit outdated :P ....anyways make sure you try using the one i have OR later....report back.

/Doggen

note:
I found this problem to disappear when doing XBMC in windowed mode, how about you?

Doggen,

Glad to know it's not just me. I do have the latest nVidia drivers, yet I still get the issue. Everything was a bit mad at work yesterday so I didnt get any time to attempt fixes last night, hopefully will have more luck tonight.

Incidentally windowed mode actually doest work at all, ,I get the window but it just freezes up and never displays any of the xbmc stuff, not even the logo at the start. So i wonder if my problem is related to something else.

I see that pretty much windowed mode is the fall back that works everytime when other issues are causing problems, so i'm surprised that mine didn't work.

Dont suppose you have any theories on that?

[Doggen]

hmm, i know i tried like 10-15 different drivers from guru3d, if youv'e tried all the latest win 7 drivers, try some of the later vista driver and see if that give you any luck, my problem did dissapeared at some point when changing videodriver, i didnt do anything else (re-installs etcetc)

[Silverxxx]

So your LCD works fine otherwise, in other full screen applications? (and in normal windows?) Have you tried any opengl applications?

[johnzxr]

All,

Thanks very much for the help with this, I have now resolved the issue.

Thanks Doggen for the driver suggestion, I downloaded the latest nvidia 1.95 drive from guru3D as apposed to nVidia's own site and despite the fact the drivers were not verified (unlike version 1.85) it fixed the problem.

Things did goa little weird with colours and resolutions for a while after installation, but after e reboot andre-install of XBMC all is now well.

Thanks again

John

[Leocmp]

All,

Thanks very much for the help with this, I have now resolved the issue.

Thanks Doggen for the driver suggestion, I downloaded the latest nvidia 1.95 drive from guru3D as apposed to nVidia's own site and despite the fact the drivers were not verified (unlike version 1.85) it fixed the problem.

Things did goa little weird with colours and resolutions for a while after installation, but after e reboot andre-install of XBMC all is now well.

Thanks again

John

Hi i have same problem, please confirm number of driver, i found only 190.15, thanks !

[Silverxxx]

it would be 190.15, it was released 2 days ago

[johnzxr]

it would be 190.15, it was released 2 days ago

That's correct, I was doing it from memory and remembered incoreectly