Ubuntu 16.04 Nvidia M1000M screen/video tearing

[Artur]

Hi,

I have been investigating and trying to find a solution to this problem, and since I didn't find an existing bug report, I figured I'll do on.

The problem is that I am experiencing screen tearing/lag/pixeling with my new Dell Precission 5510 Laptop which is using this configuration:

artur@pandaadb:~$ lspci -k | grep -EA2 'VGA|3D'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Integrated Graphics (rev 06)
 DeviceName: Onboard IGD
 Subsystem: Dell Skylake Integrated Graphics
--
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M] (rev ff)
 Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_361
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 8260 (rev 3a)

artur@pandaadb:~$ uname -a
Linux pandaadb 4.4.0-22-generic #40-Ubuntu SMP Thu May 12 22:03:46 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

A bit more info maybe on this:

artur@pandaadb:~$ sudo lshw -numeric -C display
  *-display
       description: 3D controller
       product: GM107GLM [Quadro M1000M] [10DE:13B1]
       vendor: NVIDIA Corporation [10DE]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
       version: a2
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
       resources: irq:134 memory:dc000000-dcffffff memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:c0000000-c1ffffff ioport:e000(size=128) memory:dd000000-dd07ffff
  *-display
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Intel Corporation [8086:191B]
       vendor: Intel Corporation [8086]
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 06
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pciexpress msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915_bpo latency=0
       resources: irq:126 memory:db000000-dbffffff memory:70000000-7fffffff ioport:f000(size=64)

I have been trying drivers with these versions:

367.18
361.45
364.19

All of those have the same problem:

* Video tearing when watching video on netflix/youtube
* Scrolling in browsers appears laggy. I am unsure how to best describe it, but it appears like the redraw of the screen is too slow and you can see the redraw like a wave.
* Terminal can't keep up with typing, neither can the browser (this actually is better in 367 which I am aware is not officially supported yet)

I also believe that the driver/gpu causes a similar bug crashing the entire system randomly. However I am not sure how to confirm that.

I created a related post with some info here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2327162&p=13500945#post13500945

I tried as a workaround several "fixes" found online, non of which have any effect other than sometimes crashing the entire system and the system not starting up anymore.

E.g. I did:

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

I tried several other fixes that are documented here: http://www.iwillfolo.com/finally-nvidia-tearing-issue-fix-found/

they also did not work.

This is a rather frustrating problem and I don't know if there is a workaround. If there is something you would like me to try, I will be happy to do so. Any workaround would make my day :)

Thanks!

Edit: I forgot to mention, the only way I have found so far to get rid of the tearing is to disable the NVIDIA card completely. This is kind of a terrible workaround since I spent extra money to get a decent GPU for my laptop :/

Artur

[Chris Judge (cjudge)]

I had fixed this under 14.04, but the upgrade to 16.04 brought back the tearing (and other reboot problems).

The following fixed the tearing:

1. remove compiz
2. install compton
3. in Session/Startup, make sure compton is loaded with the following:

   compton --backend glx --paint-on-overlay --vsync opengl-swc

You probably need to make sure that VSync is enabled in the nvidia settings as well.

Logout and then back in.

[Artur (artur-kronenberg)]

Hi Chris,

I tried your fix as follows:

sudo apt-get purge compiz compiz-plugins-main-default libcompizconfig0

sudo apt-get install compton

then I went to startup applications and added your above line. (I do not know how to check that vsync is enabled and couldn't find anything abotu that either). there is no such entry in the nvidia-settings that i could see.

Restarting resulted in my not having any controls on my desktop. I managed to switch into the terminal and reverted my steps (currently now running gnome desktop). If you could have some more details I could retry your fix.

Thanks,

artur

[Artur (artur-kronenberg)]

I believe this to be an unsolvable issue with the vsync + nvidia. This is likely to be solved after the release of 1.19 of XOrg which adds support for that. Documented in:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/775691/linux/vsync-issue-nvidia-prime-ux32vd-with-gt620-m-/7