Screen Tearing

[SomeSleepyNeet]

I've just installed Pop! OS and I've got 8 tonnes of screen tearing. What could be the cause of this and how do I fix it?

This is what I'm running in case it helps:
 

Sorry if this is in the wrong category. I put it here cause this has only happened since I installed Pop! OS.

[Turtle Rig]

24 minutes ago, SomeSleepyNeet said:

I've just installed Pop! OS and I've got 8 tonnes of screen tearing. What could be the cause of this and how do I fix it?

This is what I'm running in case it helps:
 

Sorry if this is in the wrong category. I put it here cause this has only happened since I installed Pop! OS.

Perhaps turn vsync ON in nvpanel.

[Lukyp]

Are you currently using the NVIDIA GPU or the Intel one?

(There is a menu to switch that)

run glxinfo | grep NVIDIA, what does it show?

It is supposed to have screen tearing when you are running via NVIDIA because of prime synchronization disabled, but don't enable it unless you don't play video games

Btw it's strange because I see your Intel iGPU is not detected correctly (can be a screefetch bug)

[probE466]

Where are you experiencing it? Just in a browser or also in other applications/games?

[elsandosgrande]

Since Pop OS! is based off of Ubuntu and has the GNOME DE (Desktop Environment) by default, try opening a Wayland session, as I presume you're running in an Xorg session. To open a Wayland session up, simply log out, click the cog next to the sign in button, select the option with Wayland in it (probably "Pop OS! on Wayland", since the option was called "Ubuntu on Wayland" on Ubuntu the last I recall; sorry, I haven't used Ubuntu in half a year now, since I've first switched to Antergos/Arch Linux in September and now Gentoo last month). If you see no screen tearing in the Wayland session, then you just need some sort of config adjustment or something similar (I'm AMD only, so I've never dealt with Nvidia screen tearing). If I find the relevant tweak(s), I shall share them here.

EDIT: If you wish to go back to Xorg, whether it is because you need to record your screen, or to share it, or to run graphical applications as root (not really sure why you would unless you're running Gparted or installing XAMPP), just go back to that cog and select the other option (the one without Wayland in its name).

 

Also, similar to what @Chunchunmaru_ said, please do run 'glxinfo | grep -i renderer' to verify which GPU you are using by default (if my experience with hybrid graphics thusfar has taught me anything, you're probably running off of the Intel GPU). In the likely scenario that the command comes up with "*something something* Intel *something something*", try running the command with DRI_PRIME=1 appended to the beginning, like this: 'DRI_PRIME=1 glxinfo | grep -i renderer'. By the way, '-i' is so that grep ignores the case during the search (exempli gratia, nvidia versus Nvidia versus NVIDIA). Oh yeah, and I changed the regular expression in use (the string being looked for, read 'man grep' to see what I mean) from Nvidia to renderer so that we don't have to individually check for the GPUs.

Oh, also, DRI_PRIME=1 is so that it switches to the dedicated graphics for that command (it is usually properly configured out of the box by all distributions since about 2017 or 2018, as I only needed to manually configure it on Ubuntu Artful/17.10.

 

So, for example, @SomeSleepyNeet, your terminal output of 'glxinfo | grep -i renderer' should look something like this:

 

> GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_query_renderer,
> GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_query_renderer, GLX_MESA_swap_control,
> Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
> OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon (TM) R7 M340 (ICELAND, DRM 3.27.0, 5.0.7-gentoo, LLVM 8.0.0)

 

Now, it misreads my dedicated GPU as M340, while it's M440, but it still reads it as AMD. Now, I have DRI_PRIME=1 set for the entire system, not just one command, by putting it in /etc/environment. If you want a bit of further reading, this ArchWiki article goes over PRIME and even how to set it up if ever necessary: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME

However, since you are not running Arch, or even a derivative, it's at your own risk if you choose to do more than just read the article.

Edited April 18, 2019 by elsandosgrande
Clarification on one step of the instructions