Artifacting? Please Explain

[WannaBeNerd]

Will someone please explain what "Artifacting" means in regard to video? i recently bought a new PC that came with a radeon 9800 pro and when i play some games (far cry, Half-life mods) it sort of appears that you can see the refresh lines when i turn quickly in the game. is this artifacting? someone please help.

 

[WannaBeNerd]

Awesome. Thanks a lot. Also, how do i turn on the Vsync?

 

[rook]

Display propeties (right click desktop)> settings> Advanced> 3D, under custom setting under OpenGL and Direct3D.

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[WannaBeNerd]

That did it =) Thanks a ton

 

[mrface]

agreed vsync for me = vs<b>t</b>ync...

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[phsstpok]

Turning off VSync can cause "tearing".

Normally, when Vsync is enabled, your video is prevented from updating the frame buffer while that buffer is active. Instead, the updates are done during the Video Blank or on the alternate frame buffer(s). If you disable VSync then your video card is free to potentially perform updates on the active frame buffer. If this happens then the frame buffer would contain part of one frame and part of the old frame. The RAMDAC just generates an image of contents of the active frame buffer so it displays both partial frames, thus the "tearing" effect.

I think this only becomes a problem when your framerates are much higher than the refresh rate, more than 2X higher. It depends on whether you are double buffering or triple buffering but when your application is attempting to generate frames faster than all the buffers can handle then you get tearing.

At least, that's what I believe is at issue.

I'm positive about partial frames in the active buffer causing the tearing. I'm just not so sure I have the details about double and triple buffers right.

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[GeneticWeapon]

I'm a fan of vsync, except in OpenGL games. It really helps stabilize your framerates in some situations, instead of having them go up and down quickly(FarCry comes to mind) it really depends on the application.

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