Mac Pro Graphics Tearing

[kzg]

My Mac Pro has had problems with horizontal graphics tearing since I got it (stock with 7300GT). This makes playing any game that uses 3D graphics pretty terrible, yet I don't see anyone else complaining about it after searching for a very long time. The only instance I've seen of someone describing what is happening is in a review of the Mac Pro by Macintouch (here under video) . This problem has bugged me for ages and I'm very sure that its probably a driver issue, because whenever I boot into windows, presto! No more graphics tearing and everything is smooth. The most recent game I've tried this with are Doom 3 and Civilization IV. The difference is unbelievable. Even stranger is the intro movies (prerecorded) to these games ALSO suffer from the tearing mid frame! My question is, has anyone else noticed this with there Mac Pro's and does anyone know whats going on or if there is a way to fix this (besides booting into windows).

Thanks!

 

[contoursvt]

Could it be that Vertical Sync is disabled in the system or games? That could cause tearing.

 

[erickkoch]

I have read other reports of the tearing and it has been mentioned in many reviews I've read. It's an annoying problem. I've also witnessed it firsthand at the local Apple store as it ran through vidio demos. It looked terrible and was unnaceptable as far as I'm concerned. It's one of the reasons I installed the X1900 card.

Here's an example in Halo:

 

[bmb012]

Turn on VSync.

There used to be an ATI control panel thing that I had on my Powerbook (to enable VSync on everything, because games really look terrible without it), but I don't know if there's anything for Intel macs...

 

[kzg]

I have tried turning on V-Sync in Doom 3 (Its the only game I have that has that option in the settings) but it still seems to tear the graphics. Apple has also decided that they will not allow there pro users to change any of the graphics settings beside resolution and color temp in system preferences so I can't change anything there either!

 

[Kosh66]

Turn on VSync.

There used to be an ATI control panel thing that I had on my Powerbook (to enable VSync on everything, because games really look terrible without it), but I don't know if there's anything for Intel macs...

The ATI control panel only works with ATI cards, not Nvidia Geforce cards, like his Geforce 7300.

That's one of the reasons I prefer ATI cards, more software support.

 

[Tom McMahon]

AAHHAAA!! I just posted on the MBP section about this

I wasn't sure what it was called....and yes my MBP does the same thing. Reason I posted was it got worse after the recent Apple software update (three days ago) and I'm trying to go back to the previous driver (no luck so far).

I feel your pain,
Tom

 

[KD7IWP]

I'm very lucky that no Apple updates have ever caused me trouble, I always look forward to them. But then I read about so many people who get more problems from updates.

 

[Macmadant]

It's nothing to do with the Graphics card, it's caused by the refresh rate of the screen being slower than that of the game, it's appaulingly bad on my C2D imac, even with V-SYNC enabled it still does it, and really degrades your gaming experience, i have a LCD with my powermac G4, that has a 5 ms response time, but with a radeon 9800, the gaming experience is not as glamourous, but it does not suffer nearly as much from tearing as the imac, which i believe has a response time of 12 ms, it's really sad that it happens, but i can't find a solution.

 

[Bigheadache]

Do the NVidia mac Drivers support triple buffer V-Sync? that would probably fix the tearing.

 

[M2J]

I am experiencing this graphics tearing as well. I have one of the new iMacs (just arrived today - 20" 2.4GHz) and I can't get the Civ4 game to work because of this issue.

The readme file for Civ4 suggests that tweaking the resolution and the refresh rate can solve this issue. I have tried every possible resolution and the tearing has not gone away. That leaves the refresh rate.

Regrettably, I can't figure out how to tweak the refresh rate on my new iMac. When I go into "Display" through System Preference, the drop down menu for refresh rate is greyed out. Civ4's preferences screen also has a drop down menu for changing the refresh rate but it is greyed out on my machine as well.

I called Apple and they told me that the refresh rate can be modified through the Terminal program but that they will not support me in doing this (very disappointing to be left high and dry by them like this after buying the Apple Care support package). Does anybody know how to do this?

I have appealed to the publisher of the Mac version of Civ4 for help with this problem as well - if they give me anything useful I will post it here.