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Author Topic: Strange Screen Distortion  (Read 2902 times)

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Accessless

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Strange Screen Distortion
« on: December 12, 2010, 09:32:05 AM »
So here's the situation: Whilst running games I occasionally end up with a distorted screen. It's quite hard to explain what it looks like and I can't get a screen shot as any image looks clear and normal. It's sort of a ripple effect but with straight vertical ripples down the screen. A friend has stated that I might be referring to 'screen ripping'.

Up until now I have assumed that it was just a driver issue, but today I went through the normal procedure I use to fix it [disable and re-enable display drivers]. But after disabling the drivers the distortion remained, the distortion disappeared after full drivers where re-initalised.

Now this indicates to me a hardware fault of some sort. The graphics card was running at a stable 50C today so it's not heat related. There are no other negative effects to the system during a distortion aside things being difficult to read.

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Allan

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Re: Strange Screen Distortion
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2010, 09:34:52 AM »
What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

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Re: Strange Screen Distortion
« Reply #2 on: December 12, 2010, 09:51:03 AM »
It's called "Screen tearing" and it usually happens when the refresh rate of the screen is not synced up with the framerate. Best way to solve this would be to enable the vsync option.
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Accessless

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Re: Strange Screen Distortion
« Reply #3 on: December 14, 2010, 04:05:29 PM »
It's called "Screen tearing" and it usually happens when the refresh rate of the screen is not synced up with the framerate. Best way to solve this would be to enable the vsync option.

I didn't know that windows had a vsync option lol. I'm not sure if that would work as the distortion continues once the 3D application is closed. I will give it a try but it may take a while to find out whether it worked or not due to the infrequency and inconsistency of the glitch.


What is new or different since the last time everything worked properly (ie, new hw, new sw, virus, error, etc)?

Nothing. I originally thought that it was just a program and/or driver glitch but new drivers and a different 3D program still, occasionally, produce the same effect.

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Re: Strange Screen Distortion
« Reply #4 on: January 01, 2011, 03:13:33 PM »
Nope, Civilization V just distorted on me whilst having Vsync enabled.  It may be related to the hardware incompatibility between my motherboard and the graphics card in 64-bit mode (required BIOS update to work properly). Does anyone else have any problems with the ATi Radeon 5770?