First apologies if I am starting another thread on screen flickering issues,
but I thoroughly searched this forum for solutions to my problem, without
success unfortunately >:(.
After a BIOS crash of my 7yrs old PC :O, and wanting to keep my old hard drives, I
decided to rebuild the system from a motherboard bundle. I went for a
AMD Athlone II, GEForce 6100 solution with opensuse 11.2, KDE 4, having been on
SuSE since version 8 and having 11.2 successfully working on my laptop, I am a
keen SuSe fan. (Apologies for any wrong HW spec, but I am writing it from the
top of my head on a commuter train with no internet)
After installing the hardware and software and reusing my old /home accounts
(from the previous system with KDE 3.5, SuSE 10.3) I started experiencing:
Screen flicker issues with desktop effects on when clicking the mouse
randomly on the desktop area. This goes away with desktop effects disabled.
Bad flickering (“old TV” effect) when logging off, both with desktop effects
on or off.
Now this is what I tried:
a) new fresh account. Worked for a while but no luck eventually
b) delete and recreate task bar panel
c) reinstallation and recompilation of latest NVDIDIA drivers of version
195.x.x
d) Powermizer off in nvidia setting
e) changing vertical refresh: not sure if done properly because nvidia settings
only allows 2 choices 60 (default) and 75. xorg.conf setting seems to have no
effect.
Could you please help?
Do I have to live without desktop effects (ok about that) and logoff flicker
(I am not ok about this though)?
Am I missing something?
Is NVIDIA’s fault?
Why don’t they fix it?
Good news lol! seems the fact that after enabling desktop effects but disabling direct rendering it works fine (so far). It seems that desktop effects and 3D effects (cube for example and windows tranparency) are working properly.
I means the rendering is done directly on the client(application) side. For indirect rendering the rendering stuff is sent down to the X server and done there.
Considering that I use my computer mostly for programming and as my email server, not to have optimal graphical rendering is good enough and much better than getting an headache staring at flickering source code (when scrolling up & down).
However I am still puzzled by this issue.
Clearly my direct rendering is not working properly:
Because of HW issues (defective GeForce 6150 SE card)?
Because of the rest of the system, and incompatibility among components?
Because of defective drivers?
4)Because of OpenSuse packaging?
even if I disabled direct rendering in
System Settings->Desktop->Advanced->Enable Direct Rendering (Off)
and all works fine (including good responsive graphical effects)
when I do
glxinfo | grep rendering
I get
direct rendering: Yes
Which is compatible with my experience of all working fine (after a few days of frustration).
Not an NVIDIA user, but the direct rendering is obviously enabled and working for you.
I don’t know whether this ArchWiki page offers any useful info, but this is mentioned
In KDE, go to System Settings -> Desktop -> Advanced Options and make sure the next options match:
* Compositing type: OpenGL
* Keep thumbnails of hidden windows up to date: Checked
* OpenGL mode: Texture From Pixmap
* Texture filter: Bilinear
* Direct rendering: Checked
* Use VSync: Checked
Just a guess here: The VSync option may be worth a try for the flickering.
Edit: And FWIW, you may find the following web page relevant (even though your graphics card model is not mentioned):
Could all my problems (flickering + some random crash of Xorg) due to the fact I have installed the 32bit version of 11.2 on a AMD Athlone II?
Any idea/comment on this?
When I have a couple of hours free (not many these days with full time job + family with young daughter) I’ll try the 64 bit, on a virtualbox first.
Will keep people posted on this, but please shout if you think a 32bit installation is a silly thing (as I guess) for my CPU (just an oversight reusing the same DVD i used for my laptop).
gchiaia wrote:
> Could all my problems (flickering + some random crash of Xorg) due to
> the fact I have installed the 32bit version of 11.2 on a AMD Athlone
> II?
> Any idea/comment on this?
i’d say it is highly likely that 64 vs 32 has am impact on this
problem…i think it has something to do with power management at the
kernel level…i’d guess it a waste of time to try to solve it by
removing a mostly working 32…instead i think i’d experiment with
different kernel parameters, like:
i can’t explain why any may (or may not) work but i reckon a search in
these fora, or google, can help you with these or others that might
solve the shutdown flicker…
two notes: make a backup of your important data and read my caveat,
below. (then do your homework, it is your system)
