Display corruption on Dell XPS 1710 (nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX) on F7

[Crosskeys]

I'm experencing a consistent problem where my laptop display appears to lose sync with the controller. I'm not certain of the correct terminology but the details from the screen appear to be there (say, if I have a gnome-terminal open [with black text, white background] and hold down Ctrl-C, a set of vertical black lines appears). The colours are unaffected, just the content is scrambled, with defined edges. The problem appears randomly, sometimes it will happen after a few seconds, other times it will go for hours with no problems. I also experience the intermittent flicker (very short flashes of black) reported by other users.
I'm running Gnome with compiz as window manager.

When I suspend to RAM the problem is gone on restart (if it restarts - but that's probably another issue), but using Ctrl-Alt-FnPlus/FnMinus to swicth resolutions has no effect. I can see the screen content changing as I switch through the modes but they're all scrambled in the same way.

Display: 17-inch Seiko (DFP-0) 1920x1200 32 bpp.
GPU: nvidia GeForce Go 7950 GTX - 512 MiB VRAM
Kernel: 2.6.22.4-65.fc7
nvidia driver version: 100.14.19 (compiled on this machine. I was using livna 100.14.11 RPM but this had the same problem).

Other: Intel Core 2 Duo T7600 (2 x 2.33 GHz), 2 GiB RAM, ...

$ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf

# Xorg configuration created by livna-config-display

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "single head configuration"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
InputDevice "Synaptics" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/nvidia"
ModulePath "/usr/lib/xorg/modules"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "AIGLX" "on"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Monitor1"
VendorName "Monitor Vendor"
ModelName "LCD Panel 1920x1200"
HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0
VertRefresh 50.0 - 75.0
Option "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Videocard0"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "NvAGP" "1"
Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True"
Option "DisableGLXRootClipping" "True"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen0"
Device "Videocard0"
Monitor "Monitor1"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Viewport 0 0
Depth 24
Modes "1920x1200" "1600x1200" "800x600" "640x480" "640x400"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
Option "Composite" "Enable"
EndSection

[jrummy27]

I have a XPS M1710 with similar problems. The black flicker can be solved by editing /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia, changing this line:

options NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles=0

To this:

options nvidia NVreg_RegistryDwords="PerfLevelSrc=0x2222" NVreg_Mobile=3 NVreg_ModifyDeviceFiles=0

You'll probably need to reload the module or reboot.

As far as the screen corruption, I can't tell if you described the same issue as mine or not. My screen randomly gets corrupted, everything will turn into moving horizontal lines (thats the best description I can think of). Only a reboot fixes it for me, killing X doesn't help. It doesn't happen that often to concern me, maybe once a week or less. I blamed it on a hardware problem but if it sounds the same as your issue then its probably not.

Crosskeys, I have not been able to get suspend working properly in F8 with the livna module. It will suspend but when it comes back there is just a blank screen with the mouse pointer. Did you do anything special to get it working?

[jrummy27]

Nevermind, I got suspend working. Fusion Icon->Settings Manager->General Settings->Display Settings->Sync to vblank = unchecked. It now works fairly reliablly.

[Crosskeys]

jrummy27,
thanks for the modprobe entry, I'll try it when I get back to the machine later.

That "moving horizontal lines" problem sounds like what I'm seeing alright. It started as happening only once a week or so but soon became a lot more frequent. I have no hard evidence to prove it but it seems to occur more often as the GPU temperature rises. Using the panel applet, the GPU is reported to be running at about 55 to 60 degrees celcius most of the time after initially warming up. Also it seems to commonly happen when the ripples of the visual bell reach the edge of the screen (though certainly not always).
Does suspending now "fix" that for you as well?
Also have you seen anyone else report this problem? I've searched the web and plenty of forums but haven't found another reference to it, maybe becuase it's difficult to explain so I'm using the wrong search terms.

[jrummy27]

Crosskeys, I haven't seen the problem in a week or two but its not uncommon for it to go away for awhile. Suspending works fine for me now. I have not heard of anyone else having this problem, however I don't think I've really found anyone with a XPS M1710 running Fedora. And I agree, it makes it that much more difficult that the problem is not easy to describe.