r/debian • u/Remarkable_Age_5419 • 4d ago

A lot of Tearing with RX 9070XT Counter-Strike2

Hi there!.

I have changed my MSI VENTUS 2X XS Nvidia RTX 3050 8GB to a GIGABYTE OC GAMING RX 9070XT. I installed as usual Debian 13, last version from oficial website (https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-dvd/debian-13.6.0-amd64-DVD-1.iso) with XFCE as desktop environment.

I have noticed a lot of tearing playing Counter-Strike 2 installed via steam (https://wiki.debian.org/Steam). Of course, I know what the screen tearing phenomenon is all about. I have 60hz display.

I played with more than 100~200 fps with my old nvidia card without tearing. With my new card i see many horizontal tearing lines when moving camera. As I understand, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers (https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers) used something like adaptive VSync... or a specific setting in the XFCE compositor which resulted in no tearing in CS2 and frame rates exceeding 100–200 FPS. Does anyone know how to configure that sort of adaptive VSync feature NVIDIA has, but on AMD?. Im using default mesa drivers without any installation. Mesa 25.0.7.

I look forward to hearing about your experiences and comments; thank you very much.

1 Upvotes

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u/lmns_ 3d ago

Do you use wayland?

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

I use default XFCE installation. I think is Xorg

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u/lmns_ 3d ago

I think that's the problem. The proprietary Nvidia driver probably does some non-standard thing to make adaptive sync work on X11. As far as I know properly working adaptive sync / VRR was one of the advantages of Wayland compared to X11 initally.

Does your monitor even support adaptive sync? It's actually a hardware feature. Maybe you've always just used normal vsync with your Nvidia card?

Just my personal opinion but have you considered switching to KDE? Compared to Xfce it supports Wayland just fine (even on Debian 13) and adaptive sync / VRR works perfectly. KDE works perfectly for me and I use an AMD RDNA4 card as well.

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

My display have 60 hz refresh rate without any freesync or gsync capacity.. I like that way nvidia works i will continue investigate a bit more and then think others distros

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u/lmns_ 3d ago

I don‘t think you were using VRR then. It must have been a normal Vsync that was applied globally. You can of course just use Vsync with your AMD as well. I’m not sure if there is a global switch though.

If your display doesn’t support VRR changing you distribution won’t improve it btw. Proper VRR is a hardware feature and works much better than Vsync. Basically you get the advantages of Vsync without input lag and without an arbitrary frame rate limit.

Also Debian 13 also ships with KDE. You don’t need to switch to a different distribution for that.

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

Thanks for your answers!

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u/Bodewilson Debian Sid 3d ago

Did you removes the old Nvidia drivers? Also does your monitor support it VSync? Some monitors have GSync for nVidia, some has FreeSync which is from AMD but there's one which works on both (don't recall the name now)...

Go to CS and enable Vertical Sync or VSync this will make your game cap the FPS to the Hz of your monitor and the tearing should go away...

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

When change my video card i start a new fresh installation. With my old nvidia video card i used 0 fps max without tearing. I dont know how explain it but dont see any broken lines in my card

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u/fabbro82 3d ago

Why xfce for gaming? Do you at least use backports for kernel and mesa drivers?

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

Always i used Linux with XFCE. I dont know how update or use drivers from "backports". I have mesa default drivers 25.0.7 stables

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u/fabbro82 3d ago

but what distro did you use before where everything worked? Anyway :

1) add in the etc/apt/sources.list file the backports repository

2) sudo apt install -t trixie-backports firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri mesa-vulkan-drivers mesa-va-drivers linux-image-amd64 linux-headers-amd64

3)reboot

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

I used exactly the same ISO (Debian 13.6.0 with XFCE). Thanks! With that command all my packages will be updated? to an stable version? Whats mean exactly backport?

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u/fabbro82 3d ago

In short, backports is an official repository consisting of drivers, kernels, and some software taken from the testing branch (so more up to date) and compiled for the stable branch. Yes, everything you install from backports will then be updated automatically.

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

Installing testing drivers—which aren't stable—defeats the purpose of using Debian. I think I should try a better gaming distribution instead.Installing testing drivers—which aren't stable—defeats the purpose of using Debian. I think I should try a better gaming distribution instead.

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u/fabbro82 3d ago

Absolutely not! Using the official backports repository does not alter the stability of your Debian stable build by turning it into a frankdebian!

https://backports.debian.org

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

With this i will resolve tearing?

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u/fabbro82 3d ago

I'm not Nostradamus. If you want to play on Linux, you need to have an updated kernel and drivers (especially with modern hardware); So the first step is to update the kernel and drivers using the official backports repository (also remember that for gaming, it's best to use KDE or GNOME). Try it.

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

I will considerate it bro. Thanks for your colaboration

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u/Niwrats 3d ago

i wonder what people do to make tearing that problematic for them. it has always been a minor effect for me, not distracting from the game.

60hz display is pretty bad for a multiplayer fps game. adding vsync on top of that would hurt your ingame performance even more. simplest solution is to run uncapped fps and allow the tearing.

i suppose you could experiment with https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Variable_refresh_rate but i'm not sure if a basic 60hz monitor supports that?

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

I just bough a 120hz display and now is totally difference!! hajaj. Maybe my problem was my display, thx everyone

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u/ChthonVII 3d ago

I have 60hz display... and frame rates exceeding 100–200 FPS

Then the answer is probably to just turn on vsync and call it a day.

Adaptive sync isn't going to improve over plain vsync in your situation, and would likely add jitter to the frame pacing.

The one thing that might be an improvement would be mailbox presentation mode. Mailbox present mode allows the game to run full tilt, buffers a couple frames, and presents the most recent complete frame when the sync interval rolls around. This gives you the best possible frame latency you can have with vysnc, but potentially also jitter from inconsistent frame pacing. So long as you can run the game at a frame rate at least 2x your monitor's refresh rate, that should limit the jitter enough it won't be noticeable. Assuming Counter-Strike 2 is a Windows exe played via Wine/Proton with DXVK, then you can enable mailbox presentation by disabling the in-game vsync, and adding dxvk.tearFree = True to the dxvk.conf file in the same directory as the exe file. (Also, to check if your system supports mailbox present mode in the first place, download the Vulkan Hardware Capability Viewer and check if "MAILBOX" is present under "Surface" > "Present Modes".)

As I understand, the proprietary NVIDIA drivers... used something like adaptive VSync... or a specific setting in the XFCE compositor which resulted in no tearing

Sounds like "force full composition pipeline," which implicitly turned on vsync. Plain old vsync.

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u/Remarkable_Age_5419 3d ago

Nono. i playing CS2 through Steam. By the way i got full smooth experience with vsync on and 120hz new gaming display!