Very weird screen tearing

[Puppetmaster]

Anybody else experiencing screen tearing while playing Doom? The weird thing is the screen tearing on my computer is like halving my monitor into 2 triangles with a slant line from the bottom left to upper right edge. It's so clear that it really bothers me while playing. I turned V Sync on. I even turned it on from the Nvidia control panel for doom64.exe. Still no dice. My computer is a gaming laptop Alienware 15 R2 i7 970M. Already installed the latest nvidia driver.

[Speedily]

try running it in windowed/borderless mode, its worked for me in other games, or try using adaptive v-sync

[Puppetmaster]

Originally posted by Speedily:

try running it in windowed/borderless mode, its worked for me in other games, or try using adaptive v-sync

I'm going to try windowed/borderless mode. Tried using adaptive v-sync it had no effect.

[Puppetmaster]

It didn't work sadly. The slant line is so clear. It''s like I'm watching two triangle screens that are overlapping. It's seriously ruining my enjoyment of the game.

[Sparkikus]

Did you ever find a fix for this?

[NilSatis]

Tearing should not occur in this way with "triangle screens" or at least I have never seen it happen like that. Are you sure nothing else is occuring? That sounds more like artifacting, or some sort of gpu issue.
The clue is you turned vsync on, and nothing changed.......that isnt logically possible.

[Sparkikus]

Pretty sure its not artifacting, the split in the screen runs straight through the middle on a horizontal from top left to bottom right. Tried everything.. borderless, windowed, fullscreen, on, off, adaptive, forced on through control panel.

Running on a gaming laptop though, currently dowloading onto my desktop to see if its that...

laptop: i7 6700hq, 970m 3gb, 8gb ram
desktop: fx8350, r9 270x 2gb, 16gb ram

[Puppetmaster]

Originally posted by Sparkikus:

Pretty sure its not artifacting, the split in the screen runs straight through the middle on a horizontal from top left to bottom right. Tried everything.. borderless, windowed, fullscreen, on, off, adaptive, forced on through control panel.

Running on a gaming laptop though, currently dowloading onto my desktop to see if its that...

laptop: i7 6700hq, 970m 3gb, 8gb ram
desktop: fx8350, r9 270x 2gb, 16gb ram

I haven't found a fix for this. I noticed it will only occur in certain areas of the game. I'm currently playing Wolfenstein The New Order and I was surprised it also occurred in certain areas of the game. So i'm suspecting it has something to do with id Tech and my laptop. Please tell me if it also happens on your desktop.

[Sparkikus]

Can confirm, desktop runs fine through HDMI to my TV (albeit, not very well due to crappy graphics card). Must be something to do with our laptop monitors..

I have an MSI Ghost Pro with the 1080p display.

[Messi]

Try turning off v-sync instead?
I also experienced this on 970m. Turning off v-sync works for me.

[NikkMann]

I have the same problem too. Alienware 15 R2 gtx 980m with 4k screen. From what I've read, the problem comes from nvidia optimus, in that the screen and normal desktop are powered by the intel poressor, but the games are powered by the nvidia graphics card. So basically the nvidia card has to force its rendering through the intel processors normal screen rendering causing the refresh rate to constantly lag behind.

I've found that the problem is minimized if you go to the nvidia control panel and set the game to run at a slightly higher fps than the monitors refresh rate. For example, making it run somewhere between 60.7 and 62 fps (try them out and found what works for you). It helps, but it doesnt go away completely.

And like Spartikus said earlier, if you just run through an HDMI to a TV it works perfectly because the nvidia graphics card has full control of the screen at that point.

[Puppetmaster]

Originally posted by BeatAirBreaker:

I have the same problem too. Alienware 15 R2 gtx 980m with 4k screen. From what I've read, the problem comes from nvidia optimus, in that the screen and normal desktop are powered by the intel poressor, but the games are powered by the nvidia graphics card. So basically the nvidia card has to force its rendering through the intel processors normal screen rendering causing the refresh rate to constantly lag behind.

I've found that the problem is minimized if you go to the nvidia control panel and set the game to run at a slightly higher fps than the monitors refresh rate. For example, making it run somewhere between 60.7 and 62 fps (try them out and found what works for you). It helps, but it doesnt go away completely.

And like Spartikus said earlier, if you just run through an HDMI to a TV it works perfectly because the nvidia graphics card has full control of the screen at that point.

Thanks for the info. I also suspect it has something to do with id Tech because I haven't experienced this in any other game that doesn't use id Tech on my gaming laptop, only Doom 2016 and Wolfenstein The New Order.

[Pinfet]

Has anyone found a fix for this? I am having the same problem on my new Alienware 17 laptop.

[Richi_15]

i think that´s a laptop exclusive problem. I am also experiencing this weird visual bug

[ibsober]

Alienware laptop . . . disabling v-sync (off) fixed it for me . . .

[The Great Hank]

BeatAirBreaker already gave a pretty good rundown, but yeah, that type of tearing is caused by Optimus on laptops with both Intel HD Graphics and a dedicated GPU, on Windows 10. Had the same thing on my GTX 960m, but I noticed it much less when the framerate was unlocked. If I recall correctly it only shows up when the framerate of the program is the same as the refresh rate of your monitir (most likely 60 fps -> 60Hz). Running above or below 60 fps will fix it most likely.

Also, no such issue on my desktop (GTX 970). On your laptop the dedicated GPU must hand over the rendered frame to the Intel HD Graphics, as the monitor is most likely directly connected to Intel HD (so the pc can save energy by turning of the dedicated GPU entirely under light workloads, but still be able to output to a display). On a desktop the monitor is directly connected to the graphics card (GPU), so that handing over part is not necessary.

On my laptop the issue occurs on all games that run in borderless or windowed mode vsynced or capped at the monitors refresh rate. Makes it really hard to play certain games that always run in borderless, such as Transistor (where I first noticed those lines). In some cases limiting the framerate to something lower will screw with frametiming (how long each frame is displayed; 16.67 ms for 60 fps, 33.33 ms for 30 fps, etc.), thus making games feel stuttery while they are capped at 58 fps or something similar.

The issue has to do with how the Intel HD + dedicated GPU combo works on Windows 10, by comparison, when I had a laptop with Windows 8.1 (and a GTX 950m) I did not notice those afwul tear lines in games like Transistor. Maybe the video output (for example HDMI port) on your laptop is connected to the dedicated GPU directly, meaning that you won't get that tearing when gaming on just an external screen, but this varies per laptop (not the case on my Asus GL552).

I'm not sure if it will get fixed in a Windows or driver update (or already has been, considering I barely game on my laptop, pretty much only on my desktop). In any case, just run games in exclusive fullscreen and you shouldn't run into issues.