Eliminate screen tearing with older AMD graphics chips

[isadora]

Both of my desktops have older AMD graphics chips, one is on a PCI Express card, the other is intergrated/on-board. I have experienced screen tearing, which occurs when web browsing and when closing a terminal window. When web browsing and scrolling through the page, you might notice what looks like a diagonal line break. I would also see this when closing a terminal window, in this case, QTerminal, with the LXQt desktop. That diagonal break is the screen tearing.

I found a few web sites that had instructions to place a file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with certain information in the file, however this file did not work on either of my desktops, as the information presented in the file didn't apply to the AMD graphics chips I'm using.

The command xrandr --verbose | grep "TearFree" indicated the TearFree setting was: auto.

I took a look at the xorg.conf file in /etc/X11/ and scrolled down to where it references the driver. For both of my desktops, it's "ati" and the Identifier is "device1". The Identifier displayed in the information I found online was completely different. So I decided to write a new file named 20-ati.conf and placed it in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ with the following in it:

Code: Select all

Section "Device"
        Identifier "device1"
        Driver "ati"
        Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

then rebooted.

After logging in, I ran xrandr again and it resulted in:

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~]$ xrandr --verbose | grep "TearFree"
        TearFree: on
        TearFree: on

I am no longer experiencing screen tearing.

I hope this information will be helpful to anyone else who is experiencing this issue.

[Germ]

Thanks for the info.