Tearing/horizontal rippling effect even with v-sync

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Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Tearing/horizontal rippling effect even with v-sync

Post by Eonds » 25 Jun 2021, 04:42

I currently play rainbow six siege and when I do a benchmark run, or pan smoothly (i have the Razer 8k, 16K dpi as well) there's a incredibly obvious rippling effect on the middle left /bottom left of my screen constantly. I've made sure my refresh rate (144hz) is 144.000 and nothing more or less and still the same issue. I've set v-sync in the NVIDIA CP, to let the 3d application decide, same issue. I've re-enabled all my drivers within the device manager and still have the issue. I have a feeling this is artifacting of some kind from an overclock. I've tried underclocking my GPU a lot, still same issue. My last guess is my CPU/RAM overclock. Could it be that my ram is getting too hot? I'm just stumped on this one, any suggestions? I also do a decent amount of tweaking within windows but i still don't see how this could happen from bcdedits & a few registry changes regarding priorities.

deama
Posts: 368
Joined: 07 Aug 2019, 12:00

Re: Tearing/horizontal rippling effect even with v-sync

Post by deama » 25 Jun 2021, 14:13

Eonds wrote:
25 Jun 2021, 04:42
I currently play rainbow six siege and when I do a benchmark run, or pan smoothly (i have the Razer 8k, 16K dpi as well) there's a incredibly obvious rippling effect on the middle left /bottom left of my screen constantly. I've made sure my refresh rate (144hz) is 144.000 and nothing more or less and still the same issue. I've set v-sync in the NVIDIA CP, to let the 3d application decide, same issue. I've re-enabled all my drivers within the device manager and still have the issue. I have a feeling this is artifacting of some kind from an overclock. I've tried underclocking my GPU a lot, still same issue. My last guess is my CPU/RAM overclock. Could it be that my ram is getting too hot? I'm just stumped on this one, any suggestions? I also do a decent amount of tweaking within windows but i still don't see how this could happen from bcdedits & a few registry changes regarding priorities.
If anything, it would be more or less a monitor artifact, so could try downclocking to 120hz.

I used to have issues with vsync myself back on windows 7 (which windows you got?) But that was mostly due to me disabling aero which disabled native vsync (it sucked anyway).
I guess you're on windows 10? If you run fullscreen exclusive then it should disable the dwm making tearing happen more often, then again though I still got tearing even with the dwm on, but I was on windows 8.1.
Anyway, you can try using RTSS' scanline sync feature, that fixed all my vsync and stuttering issues, as long as my GPU/CPU were powerful enough to maintain the frames; don't even need gsync if you configure it right.

Here's a quote on how to set it up I wrote before:
Disable all vsync, from nvidia control panel and in games.

Not sure if you have this, but download RTSS (latest version), since 2019 they added scanline sync, we will use this to fix your issue, hopefully.

Alright so open up RTSS and delete any profiles you may have for the games you'll be testing, keep global. highlight "Global" profile and then click "Setup" at the bottom. Under the "FCAT properties" tick the "enable frame color indicator" and to the right pick the 2 bars option from the drop down; click ok. If you have any values under "frame limit" or "scanline sync", put them to 0.
Now basically what should happen is two long white bars on the left side of your screen should appear when you start a game, if they don't make sure other profiles aren't interfering, and make sure you also got Show On-screen statistics enabled, as well as on-Screen display support.

Now open up a game, make sure the game is easy for you to run at 240fps (if you have a 240hz monitor), and make sure you don't do these tests in the main menu, make sure you're inside of the game itself.
Your framerate should be uncapped at this point, and the white bars to the left should be flickering a bunch between transparent white bar, and a solid white bar, or just flickering between no bar and a solid white bar. When this happens that means the frames aren't in sync, basically it's a microstutter. If the two bars are visible, but they're transparent white, then you don't have any stutters or tearing; this is what you want.
Essentially the idea is that you play with the scanline sync value until you can get 2 transparent white bars on the left at all times (or as often as you can). For me, at 120hz, with a ryzen 3600, 2060 super, and a 1080p monitor, -300 was the sweet spot for me if I had the dwm enabled. If I have the dwm disabled then you'd have to tune it on a per game basis, but I found most games worked fine for me at 870.

Here are examples to help you:
what you want:
https://i.imgur.com/g4SAoQW.jpg
See how there's two white bars but they're transparent? You can see a silhouette of some button and the rest of the map in the background, you want to keep it like this at all times, or at least most of the time.

what you don't want:
https://i.imgur.com/2XZ7g4l.jpg
This is what you don't want, it basically gives you obvious flickering and just doesn't look in-sync so to speak. One bar may look transparent whereas the other bar will look solid, e.g. in bottom of the picture, the right one looks transparent, whereas the left one looks solid, you want them both to be transparent all the time, and throughout the entire screen not just the lower half.

Keep in mind that these bars will actually behave differently at different fps and hz. I'm not entirely sure how they'll look like at 240hz, but should be something similar. Basically, if you don't notice the flickering, that's what you want to keep it at, if it flickers, then that's bad and you want to avoid that.

If you've gone through all the values and you still can't get it transparent stable, then there's something interfering with your general system, e.g. you have a big resource hog in the background, or lots of small resource hogs, or even something itself is wrong with windows, e.g. timer resolution problems etc...
It could also mean that your version of windows may be broken, or has been configured really badly (maybe an update broke something?) In which case we'll have to go through an elimination process, hopefully it won't come to this...
And finally, if you still can't get it stable, then your hardware isn't up to snuff, for that particular game at least.

BONUS:
This is what a tearline looks like, you won't have to worry about this though, unless you disable the dwm or run games in fullscreen exclusive:
https://i.imgur.com/h6aV0MG.jpg
Basically you have a type of "tear" that flickers in a specific spot (the spot can change, and the size can change too, could be half the screen), and it looks like the bad flickering I was talking about above, but at a specific spot on the bars.

Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Re: Tearing/horizontal rippling effect even with v-sync

Post by Eonds » 29 Jun 2021, 20:01

deama wrote:
25 Jun 2021, 14:13
Eonds wrote:
25 Jun 2021, 04:42
I currently play rainbow six siege and when I do a benchmark run, or pan smoothly (i have the Razer 8k, 16K dpi as well) there's a incredibly obvious rippling effect on the middle left /bottom left of my screen constantly. I've made sure my refresh rate (144hz) is 144.000 and nothing more or less and still the same issue. I've set v-sync in the NVIDIA CP, to let the 3d application decide, same issue. I've re-enabled all my drivers within the device manager and still have the issue. I have a feeling this is artifacting of some kind from an overclock. I've tried underclocking my GPU a lot, still same issue. My last guess is my CPU/RAM overclock. Could it be that my ram is getting too hot? I'm just stumped on this one, any suggestions? I also do a decent amount of tweaking within windows but i still don't see how this could happen from bcdedits & a few registry changes regarding priorities.
If anything, it would be more or less a monitor artifact, so could try downclocking to 120hz.

I used to have issues with vsync myself back on windows 7 (which windows you got?) But that was mostly due to me disabling aero which disabled native vsync (it sucked anyway).
I guess you're on windows 10? If you run fullscreen exclusive then it should disable the dwm making tearing happen more often, then again though I still got tearing even with the dwm on, but I was on windows 8.1.
Anyway, you can try using RTSS' scanline sync feature, that fixed all my vsync and stuttering issues, as long as my GPU/CPU were powerful enough to maintain the frames; don't even need gsync if you configure it right.

Here's a quote on how to set it up I wrote before:
Disable all vsync, from nvidia control panel and in games.

Not sure if you have this, but download RTSS (latest version), since 2019 they added scanline sync, we will use this to fix your issue, hopefully.

Alright so open up RTSS and delete any profiles you may have for the games you'll be testing, keep global. highlight "Global" profile and then click "Setup" at the bottom. Under the "FCAT properties" tick the "enable frame color indicator" and to the right pick the 2 bars option from the drop down; click ok. If you have any values under "frame limit" or "scanline sync", put them to 0.
Now basically what should happen is two long white bars on the left side of your screen should appear when you start a game, if they don't make sure other profiles aren't interfering, and make sure you also got Show On-screen statistics enabled, as well as on-Screen display support.

Now open up a game, make sure the game is easy for you to run at 240fps (if you have a 240hz monitor), and make sure you don't do these tests in the main menu, make sure you're inside of the game itself.
Your framerate should be uncapped at this point, and the white bars to the left should be flickering a bunch between transparent white bar, and a solid white bar, or just flickering between no bar and a solid white bar. When this happens that means the frames aren't in sync, basically it's a microstutter. If the two bars are visible, but they're transparent white, then you don't have any stutters or tearing; this is what you want.
Essentially the idea is that you play with the scanline sync value until you can get 2 transparent white bars on the left at all times (or as often as you can). For me, at 120hz, with a ryzen 3600, 2060 super, and a 1080p monitor, -300 was the sweet spot for me if I had the dwm enabled. If I have the dwm disabled then you'd have to tune it on a per game basis, but I found most games worked fine for me at 870.

Here are examples to help you:
what you want:
https://i.imgur.com/g4SAoQW.jpg
See how there's two white bars but they're transparent? You can see a silhouette of some button and the rest of the map in the background, you want to keep it like this at all times, or at least most of the time.

what you don't want:
https://i.imgur.com/2XZ7g4l.jpg
This is what you don't want, it basically gives you obvious flickering and just doesn't look in-sync so to speak. One bar may look transparent whereas the other bar will look solid, e.g. in bottom of the picture, the right one looks transparent, whereas the left one looks solid, you want them both to be transparent all the time, and throughout the entire screen not just the lower half.

Keep in mind that these bars will actually behave differently at different fps and hz. I'm not entirely sure how they'll look like at 240hz, but should be something similar. Basically, if you don't notice the flickering, that's what you want to keep it at, if it flickers, then that's bad and you want to avoid that.

If you've gone through all the values and you still can't get it transparent stable, then there's something interfering with your general system, e.g. you have a big resource hog in the background, or lots of small resource hogs, or even something itself is wrong with windows, e.g. timer resolution problems etc...
It could also mean that your version of windows may be broken, or has been configured really badly (maybe an update broke something?) In which case we'll have to go through an elimination process, hopefully it won't come to this...
And finally, if you still can't get it stable, then your hardware isn't up to snuff, for that particular game at least.

BONUS:
This is what a tearline looks like, you won't have to worry about this though, unless you disable the dwm or run games in fullscreen exclusive:
https://i.imgur.com/h6aV0MG.jpg
Basically you have a type of "tear" that flickers in a specific spot (the spot can change, and the size can change too, could be half the screen), and it looks like the bad flickering I was talking about above, but at a specific spot on the bars.
Windows 10, Exclusive Full Screen. I'll trying downclocking it, but I have a feeling it has something to do with interference of some kind. It's just very odd. It never really goes away, the gameplay is a lot smoother at night though. I haven't specifically looked to see if the artifact is present at night. I'll let you know if the downclocking works.

empleat
Posts: 149
Joined: 28 Feb 2020, 21:06

Re: Tearing/horizontal rippling effect even with v-sync

Post by empleat » 18 Jul 2021, 09:28

Eonds wrote:
25 Jun 2021, 04:42
I currently play rainbow six siege and when I do a benchmark run, or pan smoothly (i have the Razer 8k, 16K dpi as well) there's a incredibly obvious rippling effect on the middle left /bottom left of my screen constantly.
I had that too. Apparently it is when you have fps closer to your refresh rate like 143, I Am not sure what causes that. But blurbuster admin told me, or who... I capped fps under and it didn't happen instantly. It is strange tho, I never used to cap fps in 90% of games and never saw this in my life... viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8570&p=66840#p66840

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