Bug#755683: This is a compositor issue

[Mert Dirik]

Hi, dear maintainers and all the others;

I've spent quite a bit of time researching on  this issue and I want 
summarize some of my findings.

This is indeed more of an issue with compositor rather than the driver 
itself, right now. The problem is timing related and is indeed a very 
old one, but it only come to the light in recent years, either related 
to the timing changes on the driver or prevailing usage of compositing 
desktops.

A common generic workaround is messing with the timing by setting 
InitialPixmapPlacement=0 with nvidia-settings.

Proper fix requires cooperation on both the driver and compositor side. 
Nvidia driver provides GL_EXT_x11_sync_object
  interface since 2011 but still not all the compositors have been 
modified to use it. To list the ones I know about:
  - Compiz: has been providing a workaround for a long time ago and it 
was fixed earlier this year.
  - kwin: I'm not sure on that one. I didn't see anyone complaining 
about it, and I myself also didn't encounter this issue when I was using it.
  - mutter: was fixed a few days ago so it'll ship with GNOME 3.18
  - compton: seems to be fixed last year.

Since it is such a tangled issue I leave the decision for 
closing/reassigning the bug to our respective maintainers.

Here are some links for further information:
mutter bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=728464
Thread in NVIDIA forum: 
https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/topic/729908/-gt-334-21-redrawing-problems-in-gnome-3-10-3-12-gtx-580/
Compiz bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/compiz/+bug/269904
compton bug: https://github.com/chjj/compton/issues/181

Have a good day,