Comment 164 for bug 556782

I realize that the last comment was almost a year ago, but apparently this bug is still around. I have it with my Gateway LT31xx laptop, with the same graphics card as the bug title. I was able to find a solution to this problem. It requires a BIOS flash with a modified bios file that enables certain options (North Bridge, IIRC).

The solution was based on this post --> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...2#post11682072 .

I went to the thread they referenced (http://forum.notebookreview.com/acer...ml#post6368072), and found the modified bios file for my laptop, a Gateway LT31xx. The modified bios file gives you an option to select only 'UMA' rather than 'UMA+Sideport'. I flashed this new bios file, after using the correct phlash.exe command (found in the first post of the notebookreview thread), and when I rebooted, there was the option. I changed that and everything looks great --- no tearing at all. I don't know if I have 3D compositing, but I do have xcompmgr running, so I think compositing works fine.

I think this is the solution that everyone is looking for in regard to the screen tearing problem. If you have a different laptop, I would suggest searching the notebookreview thread to see if a modified bios file was created for your specific model.