Flurry Screensaver on MBP

[djhyro]

HI Guys,

I've searched and found a couple of threads related to this issue. Is anyone experiencing horizontal line distortion when running the flurry screensaver on a macbook pro? The previous posts I've read dealt mostly with imacs/macbooks. I want to know if this issue is common with the MBP (better video cards than macbooks) as well? Thanks for your time.

 

[bmcgrath]

Its a common problem accross the whole mac line of computers. No need to worry about it

 

[zign]

I had it on my iBook G4, PowerBook G4, iMac G5, MBP 2.0Ghz CD and now on MBP 2.33Ghz C2D. I think the problem is with the screensaver itself.

 

[Mattydj]

Same on my macbook.

 

[00hkelly]

yes i have this issue on my C2D 2.33, 256mb gpu
from talking to people i understand that it is just 'one of those things' so nothing really to worry about it

 

[4np]

Nope, never had that issue on my PowerBook 15" (second last revision, with dual link radeon 7900 pro).

Do you see these lines constantly? Or only every now-and-then?

 

[Bunsen Burner]

It's frame rate tearing, the same problem that occurs with games. The frame rate of the screen saver is out of sync with the frame buffer. The LCD panel polls the video card at a certain rate to get new frames to draw; here, it's ~60 times per second. Let's say your MBP is capable of running the screen saver at 147 fps. The LCD (60Hz) may poll the frame buffer (147 fps) before it is full with the resultant partially drawn frames creating disjointed images, hence the horizontal line appearing up and down the screen.

If you could enable v-sync for the screen saver, the frame buffer would fill at the same rate the panel polls the video card or at an even divisor of it should your machine not be capable of running the material at the panel refresh rate; for a 60Hz refresh, this would be 15 fps, 20 fps, 30fps, etc. The resulting image will have no tear lines, though the lower frame rate motion, should it come to pass, will not be as smooth.

BB

 

[Mattydj]

_