Having Problems with horrible screen tearing.

AceofSpades2231 · May 2017

Hey guys, this is not a sims 4 specific issue but I have awful, awful screen tearing with any game I play. Nothing seems to help, v-sync does nothing on any of the game settings, and nvidia control panel does nothing. I tried something called nvidia inspector (I think thats what it was called) but it does nothing. This happens on any game I play and it really hurts my gameplay experience. My specs are:
GTX 960m
I5-6300hq
windows 10
8 GB ram
and the games that I play that are affected:
Overwatch
World of Warcraft
Sims 2,3, and 4
Skyrim
Watch Dogs 2
Planet Coaster
Cities Skylines
Not really sure if the list is helpful but its just to provide as much information as possible. I know it only happens when I am in a game.I tested this by watching the WoW cinematics that are available in the main menu and then watching the same video on youtube. The one in the game's menu tears horribly and the one on youtube does fine. I would appreciate any help you guys can provide, im kind of at a loss here. It seems to be getting worse as time goes on but it is very possible that I just notice it way more now because I am always thinking about it. I dont remember it when I first got the laptop. Thanks again

rosemow · May 2017

Hello
Make sure that your graphics drivers are uptodate.
Try changing the in game screen resolution and see if that helps.
Try playing in windowed or full screen and see if one if the modes helps better than the other.

phoebebebe13 · May 2017

Some of those games might be too demanding for your computer specs. It's possible your wearing out your video card. Speak to @chesterbigbird

Have you tried uninstalling your video drivers and doing a clean install?

SimplyJen · May 2017

Have you tried playing in Fullscreen mode? It seems this is a common issue with GTX 860M/870M/960M/965M/970M/980M and Microsoft is aware of it. No fix has been made. Different games have different reactions. Google this issue for mobile graphics and you will see you're not alone.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3158621/hybrid-graphics-and-vsync-results-in-graphic-tearing-in-some-games-and-apps-on-windows-10

If it got even worse after a recent driver update, you can trying rolling back. Otherwise update drivers if it's been a while.

phoebebebe13 · May 2017

also a reminder to update laptop cards through your laptop manufacturer. Nvidia direct download is for desktop. They give you warning to check with your laptop manufacturer first. Some desktop drivers may not work well with your laptop card

chesterbigbird · May 2017

Are you positive it is screen tearing you are seeing and not stutter?

AceofSpades2231 · May 2017

chesterbigbird wrote: »

Are you positive it is screen tearing you are seeing and not stutter?

The thing im seeing is like a line across the screen where what is on top of the line does not match up with on the bottem of the screen. It happens almost anytime the "camera" in the game moves at any high speed. (turning my character around in WoW, or looking at my house from a different angle in the sims.) I guess it is possible I am misdiagnosing the issue but from my understanding, stuttering is like a really low frame rate for a couple of seconds, often tagged as lag.

phoebebebe13 wrote: »

also a reminder to update laptop cards through your laptop manufacturer. Nvidia direct download is for desktop. They give you warning to check with your laptop manufacturer first. Some desktop drivers may not work well with your laptop card

By laptop cards you mean drivers right? I just download the drivers through the device manager in the control panel. Is that not how I should be Doing it? I assumed those are the right drivers.

Simasaurus09 wrote: »

Have you tried playing in Fullscreen mode? It seems this is a common issue with GTX 860M/870M/960M/965M/970M/980M and Microsoft is aware of it. No fix has been made. Different games have different reactions. Google this issue for mobile graphics and you will see you're not alone.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/3158621/hybrid-graphics-and-vsync-results-in-graphic-tearing-in-some-games-and-apps-on-windows-10

If it got even worse after a recent driver update, you can trying rolling back. Otherwise update drivers if it's been a while.

Thanks, I will try that

phoebebebe13 · May 2017

If I'm not mistaken you have a dell laptop. Go to the dell web, search your make and model laptop and update all the drivers they tell you to from there

chesterbigbird · May 2017

The thing im seeing is like a line across the screen where what is on top of the line does not match up with on the bottem of the screen. It happens almost anytime the "camera" in the game moves at any high speed. (turning my character around in WoW, or looking at my house from a different angle in the sims.) I guess it is possible I am misdiagnosing the issue but from my understanding, stuttering is like a really low frame rate for a couple of seconds, often tagged as lag.]

Yes that's tearing. Stutter can sometimes look like mild tearing when moving the camera, Stutter creates a jumping jerking movement.
Have you checked the FPS in game to make sure it's actually enabled?
use cheat code "fps on"

brntwaffles · May 2017

I had an hdmi cord in and my normal moniter plugged in at the same time and this caused terrible screen tearing for me until I realized it. Screen tearing went away when I unplugged the hdmi but kept my normal monitor cord hooked up.

Probably not your issue, but just in case haha

brookeohsnapp · May 2017

Outdated drivers and needed repairs could be causing the issue but there are ways to compensate for it if there's no magic fix.

If it's just your hardware having issues either from long-term use or not being up to standard, you described the issue through being "in-game", but what it amounts to is you have screen tearing issues whenever you're rendering a 3d imagespace.

That 3d imagespace can be running fine without lag, or it may be limited by whatever's causing the screen tearing issue. Screen tearing is associated with refresh rate and framerate, and Vsync is just a checkbox to try and bridge the gap of your screen tearing issue.

My point is, there's a maximum threshold of what stress you're putting your system under for games. With a screen tearing issue it's pretty unusual that no one's asked about the monitor you're using and the resolution you're running in, and I think you should take Rosemow's advice on lowering your resolution

The screen tearing arises from when your system can't output frames to the monitor as consistently as your system is set to be processing them. There's a lag in how fast it can render to a 2d image, because of the resolution you're taking a snapshot of the 3d imagespace in.

Simply put, you're trying to figure out how to stop your screen tearing, so to get that threshold you want the image resolution of the rendered frames as low as possible, on the lowest framerate you can comfortably play with. Once you get the screen tearing to stop, you can start raising your settings again.

Your native resolution is the resolution of your monitor, and the resolution games recommend are based on whether or not you can run all of those pixels perfectly or if you need a smaller image to keep up with a good playable framerate. If your game is in a lower ratio of your native resolution it sometimes runs a little faster.

If you lower your resolution, I would suggest trying to stay in fullscreen mode first when before checking windowed mode. Fullscreen runs the game as an active process, and windowed mode has to do the job of rendering your desktop or system background. Your image will be distorted but you pick a comfortable distortion ratio for your monitor that your ability to play without screen tearing allows.

Your framerate is the amount of frames at your given resolution setting that you're capable of pushing out at a time, and Vsync tends to be a framerate limiter setting. It puts a cap on frames per second by cutting out some stuttering of your numbers, so you get a more consistent output and there isn't this mismatch you're getting with your screen tearing. A frame limiter setting can lower the threshold of how many given frames in the given resolution you're letting your system try and put out, and this is easier on the system which gives you a more consistent image with more available resources. If you were to limit your frames to like 5 per second, it could cause less screen tearing the same way that the lowest resolution on 60 frames per second does.

phoebebebe13 · May 2017

brookeohsnapp wrote: »

My point is, there's a maximum threshold of what stress you're putting your system under for games. With a screen tearing issue it's pretty unusual that no one's asked about the monitor you're using and the resolution you're running in, and I think you should take Rosemow's advice on lowering your resolution

Unusual? Some of us actually know each other on these boards and know what hardware people are using. We did not need to ask op. They have a laptop. a GTX 960m . Their screen resolution that came with the laptop is 1080p. A GTX card with DDR5 vram can handle 1080p.

I will agree that they may be playing some games that their laptop can't handle on ultra . The sims 4 should be able to play on ultra on their hardware without screen tearing

Rogercorman · May 2018

Hi I wanted to thank “ rosemow” the screen tearing went away when I switched to windowed fullscreen

Rogercorman · May 2018

> @rosemow said:
> Hello
> Make sure that your graphics drivers are uptodate.
> Try changing the in game screen resolution and see if that helps.
> Try playing in windowed or full screen and see if one if the modes helps better than the other.

Thanks

rosemow · May 2018

Rogercorman wrote: »

Hi I wanted to thank “ rosemow” the screen tearing went away when I switched to windowed fullscreen

You’re welcome

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Having Problems with horrible screen tearing.

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