Created attachment 94915 [details]
git bisect log

I noticed mplayer showing some tearing starting from kernel version v3.10.7 which wasn't there in v3.8.
I could bisect it down to commit 1d7c71a3e2f77336df536855b0efd2dc5bdeb41b (drm/nouveau/disp: port vblank handling to event interface).
Unfortunately c7d73f6a8ad71f9d9f58c86981322c6e48093a4f introduced a NULL-pointer dereference regression. Luckily I found 526810adb93554e17bdb83023a01cfa8758960b2 which fixes that. Doing the bisect I had to cherry-pick that each time until I tried commit 1d7c71a. At this commit I additionally need to cherry-pick c8f28f8.
After adding those 2 commits I could run mplayer again and could clearly see the tearing effect.
My hardware:
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation C77 [GeForce 8300] (rev a2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
        Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 82f2
        Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 0
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 20
        Region 0: Memory at fd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
        Region 1: Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
        Region 3: Memory at fa000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=32M]
        Region 5: I/O ports at ec00 [size=128]
        Expansion ROM at feae0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
        Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 NoSoftRst- PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
        Capabilities: [68] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
                Address: 0000000000000000  Data: 0000
        Kernel driver in use: nouveau
        Kernel modules: nouveau