AMD 15.3 Video Playback has Horizontal Tearing

I had been watching Bosch on Amazon and made it through the first 7 or 8 episodes before upgrading the diver to 15.3 and I now see a bit of horizontal tearing in YouTube and Amazon videos at the top of the screen when there is panning in the seen. I tried turning on hardware acceleration in Silverlight that Amazon uses but it’s still there.

This was one of the more difficult drivers to install. From time to time they get the desktop stuck on a black screen after the reboot and I have to reboot disconnecting and reconnect displays or install the driver again. So I’m not looking forward to going back to the last driver. Even though I’ve never see it make a difference did uninstall the old driver first and use the AMD cleaner and DDU.

I have a similar setup to you(290x crossfire and 15.3... i'm on windows 8.1, not sure what you're on) and I just tested Prime video and didn't see any tearing. Is it possible your refresh rate got reset on your monitor?

I see you used the AMD cleaner... I can honestly say it caused nothing but problems with driver installs after.

My process that has seemed to work for 15.3 and the Omega drivers:
- Express uninstall all AMD software from add/remove programs
- Reboot
- Run DDU
- Let it reboot into safe mode and do it's thing.
- Once DDU reboots back into normal Windows then I run CCleaner on my registry.
- Reboot again
- Install new drivers... with only CCC, graphics driver, and I think the last is hardware encoding or something along those lines.

Varies by browser and windows desktop theme.
For Win7, Chrome / Aero enabled will force vsync on your desktop.

I noticed recently that if my Chrome is windowed, it starts tearing. Not sure if that's a new issue or not since I use firefox mainly.

TaintedSquirrel said:

Varies by browser and windows desktop theme.
For Win7, Chrome / Aero enabled will force vsync on your desktop.

I noticed recently that if my Chrome is windowed, it starts tearing. Not sure if that's a new issue or not since I use firefox mainly.

Click to expand...

That was it. I had disabled Aero at about the same time trying to fix the taskbar randomly popping up in full screen videos.

It's odd though, I know I've watched web videos before Vista and Aero and don't recall it always having the horizontal tearing. Also PowerDVD was ok but maybe it forces some kind of V-Sync.

I'll say it again, DDU and AMD cleaner have never fixed anything for me.

In Firefox if I use Multitwitch and open say 3 streams, my R9 290 will go into low power mode and they will stutter. It is completely unwatchable after about a minute.

If I open the same link in Chrome, it will be fine for the most part. The video card is still in low power mode.

If I do something to make the video card run at full speed then there is zero stutter, tearing, or problems in all browsers. Wish there was a "wake the F up video card!" button.

Another thing that will cause tearing on video is watching on a non primary display.
Be sure the screen you are watching on is set as the primary.

cageymaru said:

Wish there was a "wake the F up video card!" button.

Click to expand...

There is an option for "unofficial overclocking mode without powerplay support" in MSI Afterburner that will lock the voltages and clock speeds to their full-load settings. Also, disabling ULPS (even on single gpu) seems to help some of these kinds of issues I've ran into.

The unofficial overclocking mode isn't exactly recommended, but if the video playback problems are persistent enough it might be worth trying. If you're concerned about running at full speed all the time you can choose a core and voltage that is less than normal 3d settings but high enough to prevent any tearing or hitching.

I can also confirm that Aero needs to be enabled on the desktop for v-sync to work properly with VLC and probably other video players as well.

On the subject of using DDU or similar programs - I've never used these on my current 290x setup or my previous 7850s. I always do the "express uninstall" - reboot - reinstall method and it seems to work well enough. I only install CCC, GPU driver, and the sound driver for HDMI.