Mint 19: black artefacts drawn on 2nd screen

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

Hello, NVidia team!

On my PC, black artefacts are drawn over the desktop wallpaper on my second screen when non-maximized windows are present on it.

Video:

PC:
EVGA Geforce GTX 1080 Ti
Screen 1: over DisplayPort
Screen 2: over HDMI through Yamaha home theatre receiver
Nvidia driver 396.51

Issue does not occur on main screen.
Issue only occurs when the wallpaper is visible.
When a window is maximized, the issue does not occur.

Can you guys please fix this?

2

UPDATE:

This seems to have something to do with Vsync. I changed the Vsync setting to my other screen and now the issue no longer occurs.

Also, I used to have these lines in my /etc/profile, which helped reduce screen tearing on previous Mint versions:

export __GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1
export __GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=DP-0
export VDPAU_NVIDIA_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=DP-0

I commented them out. Will keep an eye on this issue and post back here if it occurs again.

3

Hi, NVidia team!

This is mr.matt.eastwood. I had to make a new account. When I tried logging into my old one, your system told me that email address I had been using was not associated with any account.

The issue I reported above still occurs, unfortunately.

Bug report log:

Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Set up second screen as follows:
    Graphics Card => HDMI cable => home theater/surround sound receiver => HDMI cable => second screen
  2. Launch Linux Mint 19 on NVidia driver 396.54
  3. Open one or more non-maximized windows
  4. Move them around on the second screen

Issue description remains the same as in my first post above.

Notes:
I can’t tell whether this issue occurs when there’s no home theater receiver in the equation. My receiver is the Yamaha RX-V661.
In addition to this phenomenon, when recording video off the second screen using OBS Studio, a horizontal tear will occasionally wander from the top to the bottom of the screen through which the background wallpaper can be seen.

4

Update: the tearing artifacts can be seen in these videos:

In this example, the issue is visible in OBS Studio.

The video window in my browser or OBS shows what is currently visible on my second screen. The tearing artifacts are only visible in the video, not on the actual screen.

I have seen similar tearing when recording the screen using SimpleScreeRecorder or Peek.

5

UPDATE: I may have found a workaround for the tearing atifacts.

In OBS, instead of “Screen Capture (XSHM)”, I selected “Window Capture (Xcomposite)”.

It seems like the tearing artifacts in the recording are now gone. The original issue with the black artefacts remains.

Here’s a thread on the Linux Mint forums that describes the same issue, with some good links in it:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=249205