stubborn persistent L-shaped screen tearing requires mobo/cpu change?

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Camineet

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Jun 15, 2012
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Hi all,

Thanks for reading my post. I'm writing to describe a problem I've been working on for over 60 days on a new build and to ask for any ideas or help.

I have L-shaped screen tearing in videos only, not in games. Tearing occurs in all video be it MPC-HC or streaming. Any video. The tearing is persistent and frequent, and occurs as a cut section in the upper right area of the video image.

Games do not exhibit the L-shaped tear, but rather just present with what I believe to be occasional tears typical of a properly functioning system (the tearing in games occur occasionally in high intensity scenes, in random places horizontally across the entire image, and its not troublesome).

I have found most screen tearing threads end without a solution. I think it's because the OP finally just accepts that the fairly annoying tearing he or she experiences is ultimately unavoidable in most systems, and must be tolerated unless one is to splurge for a G-sync setup.

Well, this L-shaped tearing must be solved even if it requires a mobo/cpu swap because it's near constant. And I'm prepared to swap out the mobo or cpu, the only things I haven't thus far tried changing, if necessary.

Here is build:

Win 7 Pro 64
Asus H97I Plus
Intel 4160
Balistic low profile 16GB RAM 1600Mhz
Corsair TX650M
Sparkle GTX 560ti
Corsair H60 cooler

Here are the results of my testing:

New video card (MSI GTX 750ti) - no improvement (returned for refund)
Play video from different drives in system - no improvement
Nvidia CP settings change - no improvement
Change HDMI cable to monitor - no improvement
Play same video from another machine on monitor - normal performance which rules out monitor
Update chipset drivers - no improvement
Update onboard video drivers - no improvement
Play video from onboard video port on mobo - frequent randomly located horizontal tearing across entire image, the kind of tearing that would be considered more typical than L-shaped, but what would be considered to be unacceptably frequent, not typical of a normally functioning system and quite suspicious.
Play video within virtual machine running Win 7 Home Prem 64 - no improvement
Install CCCP just to see if some kind of total video codec flood would supplant a possibly failing existing video codec - no improvement

At this point, I am looking for a friend /w a spare 1150 CPU I can pop in to rule out the CPU. That's not likely as I don't have such a friend at the moment, but I'm still trying.

After that, it's down to the mobo I guess. I'm past 30 day return window and looking at an RMA.

Of course, I have not tried a fresh install thus far. With everything I've done already, including the virtual machine test, I'm just not thinking the install is to blame.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Even just moral support at this point:pt1cable:







 
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norsestar

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Apr 8, 2014
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Sounds like you're doing the right kind of things to debug this. My condolences about the stubborn problem...

Googling "cpu video playback" yields some opinions that you need a strong CPU for certain kinds of video, especially in HD, so you may be on the right track blaming the CPU. What's the CPU load like during playback? Temperatures could also be an issue in a small case: how do those look?
 
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Camineet

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Jun 15, 2012
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TY for replies. I can work on a video maybe, but I don't know how to get a pic capturing a tear.

cpu load is 10% on 720p video with lots running in background. That's only about 5 degrees higher than when the system is idling.

Temps for everything except for games on this cooler including video stay at 40C games gets it up to 54C max. Prime95 gets it to 54C max.

There aren't any other issues /w the video btw. No frame rate or audio catchup issues. Videos start /w very good speed and seeking is lightning especially on M.2 SSD. I once suspected the M.2 SSD, but as you know, I have already tried playing same video from multiple drives within system. And webvideo does L-shaped tear too so...:??:

It's hard to say if tearing occurs more frequently on 1080p/720p than 480p and lower. The tearing occurs more after a few minutes of playing video than when video first starts. It's like the system is running our of a resource somewhere. It's like it takes a few minutes to get going and then really picks up. It's not a perception issue by the way. The tearing really does occur after a few minutes of viewing. I'm not just finally perceiving it minutes later.

This Intel 4160 cpu has good reviews, but it is cheap relative to a lot of the popular CPUs. I'd sure like to get my hands on any other 1150 cpu just to try at this point. Would be a touch easier than a mobo swapout - maybe 60% of the work.

 
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Camineet

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I finally had the time to buy another CPU and try swapping it out. I got my hands on a Celeron G1820 from Amazon for only $43.

Installed the CPU and got no video output from graphics card at all. In fact, with the Celeron processor installed, the graphics card seems to not receive power up at all. I'm guessing that's the case, because the fan on the GPU didn't power up. Checked all my connections a couple times, tried powering up a couple times, and finally gave up on the video card outputting any video or even powering up.

Disconnected graphics card and tried onboard video and had additional problems. For whatever reason the system wouldn't post at all sometimes. It took a couple tries to get the system to post. When it wouldn't post, it would power up and not emit a single beep which is the motherboards indication that it's going to post successfully. And there would be no video signal at all.

A couple of tries would result in the system posting successfully. Successful posting went as follows: i'd power up the system and a single beep would be emitted. the motherboard would display some kind of screen with a lot of information that I don't remember, and at the bottom it would say overclocking failed (something to do with my uefi bios config of ram, which was set to be overclocked based on an asus uefi bios diagnostic and recommendation many months ago), press F1 to enter set up to continue. Pressing F1 allow me to go to the bios and then press F10 to exit with no changes.

The next activity that the system should perform is booting windows. But immediately after exiting the uefi bios, video signal would be lost, and the system would remain powered on with fans spinning, but did not appear to do anything else.

Given that the video signal would be lost every time, I can only assume the system was doing nothing at this point, because I can't see anything on the monitor which would just go into standby mode stating no HDMI signal.

I tried a number of times and eventually gave up. Took another hour to swap the Celeron CPU out and put my core i3 back in.

So, my attempt to troubleshoot the screen tearing by swapping the CPU has resulted in no diagnostic information about the screen tearing.

Today I'm just replying to the thread to see if anyone has any ideas about what the problem with this CPU install might be. I have read that when swapping CPUs, there shouldn't be any problem like this. According to what I've read, you don't even have to reinstall windows or do any kind of special activities to prepare the system. Apparently, the system is just supposed to boot up with the bios stating that a new processor has been installed, and that's it.

Anyway, if anyone has any ideas, I'd appreciate the input.

 
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Camineet

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Oh, and after reinstalling my core i3, the system works as it did this morning before beginning the swapping operation. So, the Celeron processor failure doesn't appear to be the result of me breaking anything when installing it. Otherwise, when reverting back to my core i3, I'd be getting a problem too.
 
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