Horrible screen tearing! Help!

[Quazarstar]

Hi there.

So I'm having some pretty horrible diagonal screen tearing with this game, normally with my laptop becuase of how it is i get screen tearing on most games, but usually tinkering with the settings and such helps. But for some reason not this time, ontop of getting some frame jumps and slight stuttering every now and then at certain locations, I've been getting diagonal screen tearing a lot. Most notibly on the map when moving it around or in caves and such. I've tried every setting I possibly could try. I've tried turning Vsync on and off from my NVIDIA control panel, turned FXAA on and tried it off also, set priority to realtime in taskmanager. Tried running in fullscreen and borderless, changed every possible setting I could think of between low standard and high but I just have no idea what to do. If I'm missing somethnig I was hoping someone here might know. Here's my PC Specs below:

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6300HQ CPU @ 2.30GHz

Video Card Intel(R) HD Graphics 530

Video Card #2 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M

RAM 8.0 GB

Operating System Microsoft Windows 10 (build 16299), 64-bit

Laptop: MSI GP62 6QF Leopard Pro.

If anyone could help me I'd super appreciate it.

[edgarska]

Try going into the nvidia control panel and force the vsync for the game to "fast", it should be available for your card too. While you're at it, just set the vsync to fast globally, it will save you a lot of headaches down the line.

[Flopolopogus]

also using full screen mode seemed to help

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Try going into the nvidia control panel and force the vsync for the game to "fast", it should be available for your card too. While you're at it, just set the vsync to fast globally, it will save you a lot of headaches down the line.

I don't see any option to set Vsync to fast? All I see is on or off? Or is it somewhere I'm missing?

https://imgur.com/QuBkUW3

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Originally posted by edgarska:

Try going into the nvidia control panel and force the vsync for the game to "fast", it should be available for your card too. While you're at it, just set the vsync to fast globally, it will save you a lot of headaches down the line.

I don't see any option to set Vsync to fast? All I see is on or off? Or is it somewhere I'm missing?

https://imgur.com/QuBkUW3

It should be there if it's available, you should have an option for on, off, adaptive, adaptive (half refresh rate) and fast. And your card is a 960M so it should have those options. I know it's what everyone asks but are you sure you have recent drivers? If they're not up to date, download them from the nvidia website or from geforce experience, the ones from windows update are always out of date.

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

I don't see any option to set Vsync to fast? All I see is on or off? Or is it somewhere I'm missing?

https://imgur.com/QuBkUW3

It should be there if it's available, you should have an option for on, off, adaptive, adaptive (half refresh rate) and fast. And your card is a 960M so it should have those options. I know it's what everyone asks but are you sure you have recent drivers? If they're not up to date, download them from the nvidia website or from geforce experience, the ones from windows update are always out of date.

I do have the latest drivers, just updated them about 4 days ago and downloaded a new one yesterday as well. But I still don't have the option, all I have is VSync on and off for some reason. I think theres a problem with my Nvidia control panel but I'm too afraid to go messing around with it becuase I'm afriad I might mess something up.

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Originally posted by edgarska:

It should be there if it's available, you should have an option for on, off, adaptive, adaptive (half refresh rate) and fast. And your card is a 960M so it should have those options. I know it's what everyone asks but are you sure you have recent drivers? If they're not up to date, download them from the nvidia website or from geforce experience, the ones from windows update are always out of date.

I do have the latest drivers, just updated them about 4 days ago and downloaded a new one yesterday as well. But I still don't have the option, all I have is VSync on and off for some reason. I think theres a problem with my Nvidia control panel but I'm too afraid to go messing around with it becuase I'm afriad I might mess something up.

My bad, apparently that option is not available to laptops that have optimus (a weak intel gpu and a powerful nvidia gpu). The only way to get it would be to disable the intel gpu entirely through the bios, or editing the settings through nvidia inspector, because the options to use fast sync are there, they're just not visible in your control panel.

[edgarska]

I just remembered there was a widespread problem with diagonal screen tearing on some nvidia laptop cards, and some workarounds which might help you here. https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/903422/geforce-mobile-gpus/diagonal-screen-tearing-issues-on-gtx-860m-870m-960m-965m-970m-980m-/

The bottom line is, if you're playing the game in windowed or borderless fullscreen, change it to fullscreen. Turn vsync off, and in the game don't cap the framerate, leave it on unlimited. This will result in normal screen tearing when the framerate is too high, but it should fix the diagonal tearing you're experiencing. As for which one you'd rather deal with, that's up to you.

It might be enough to just put it in fullscreen though, so try that first. Put the game in fullscreen, turn vsync off, and cap the framerate to 60 in the game, if that doesn't work hen uncap the framerate.

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

I do have the latest drivers, just updated them about 4 days ago and downloaded a new one yesterday as well. But I still don't have the option, all I have is VSync on and off for some reason. I think theres a problem with my Nvidia control panel but I'm too afraid to go messing around with it becuase I'm afriad I might mess something up.

My bad, apparently that option is not available to laptops that have optimus (a weak intel gpu and a powerful nvidia gpu). The only way to get it would be to disable the intel gpu entirely through the bios, or editing the settings through nvidia inspector, because the options to use fast sync are there, they're just not visible in your control panel.

I'll give it a shot! But editing through nvidia inspector? Would you know how to do that or where I can download Nvidia inspector? I googled it but theres lots of different versions so I don't know which one would be best.

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

I'll give it a shot! But editing through nvidia inspector? Would you know how to do that or where I can download Nvidia inspector? I googled it but theres lots of different versions so I don't know which one would be best.

The newest one is 2.1.3.20, available from the official thread https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/nvidia-inspector-introduction-and-guide.403676/ . However before you start using it I'd suggest just changing the game to fullscreen and doing the other changes to see if it fixes it. Using nvidia inspector won't break anything because it's just changing the game's profile as if you were using the nvidia control panel, but it can still cause a game to stop working until you remove its profile and you need to know exactly what numbers to use in which parts.

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

I'll give it a shot! But editing through nvidia inspector? Would you know how to do that or where I can download Nvidia inspector? I googled it but theres lots of different versions so I don't know which one would be best.

The newest one is 2.1.3.20, available from the official thread https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/nvidia-inspector-introduction-and-guide.403676/ . However before you start using it I'd suggest just changing the game to fullscreen and doing the other changes to see if it fixes it. Using nvidia inspector won't break anything because it's just changing the game's profile as if you were using the nvidia control panel, but it can still cause a game to stop working until you remove its profile and you need to know exactly what numbers to use in which parts.

I see, thanks for all the help. ^^ I have tried changing it to fullscreen and the other changes and no luck, Ill try the inspector now. Once I figure out how to turn fast vsync on for it. Thanks very much.

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Originally posted by edgarska:

The newest one is 2.1.3.20, available from the official thread https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/nvidia-inspector-introduction-and-guide.403676/ . However before you start using it I'd suggest just changing the game to fullscreen and doing the other changes to see if it fixes it. Using nvidia inspector won't break anything because it's just changing the game's profile as if you were using the nvidia control panel, but it can still cause a game to stop working until you remove its profile and you need to know exactly what numbers to use in which parts.

I see, thanks for all the help. ^^ I have tried changing it to fullscreen and the other changes and no luck, Ill try the inspector now. Once I figure out how to turn fast vsync on for it. Thanks very much.

If you already have a profile for the game in the nvidia control panel it's very easy, just open nvidia inspector, click on the wrench icon next to Driver version, this will open a new window. In this window, look for the Ni No Kuni profile, if it's not on the dropdown list click the icon that has a house, there should be one entry there with nino2.exe at the end.

From there, go to the section that says Sync and Refresh, the last option is Vertical Sync, change it to 0x18888888, click apply changes, and it should be working next time you launch the game.

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

I see, thanks for all the help. ^^ I have tried changing it to fullscreen and the other changes and no luck, Ill try the inspector now. Once I figure out how to turn fast vsync on for it. Thanks very much.

If you already have a profile for the game in the nvidia control panel it's very easy, just open nvidia inspector, click on the wrench icon next to Driver version, this will open a new window. In this window, look for the Ni No Kuni profile, if it's not on the dropdown list click the icon that has a house, there should be one entry there with nino2.exe at the end.

From there, go to the section that says Sync and Refresh, the last option is Vertical Sync, change it to 0x18888888, click apply changes, and it should be working next time you launch the game.

Welp, I tried that. It actually seemed to make the screen tearing even worse somehow. :( Think.. I'm just going to wait until I get a better PC before playing this game.

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Originally posted by edgarska:

If you already have a profile for the game in the nvidia control panel it's very easy, just open nvidia inspector, click on the wrench icon next to Driver version, this will open a new window. In this window, look for the Ni No Kuni profile, if it's not on the dropdown list click the icon that has a house, there should be one entry there with nino2.exe at the end.

From there, go to the section that says Sync and Refresh, the last option is Vertical Sync, change it to 0x18888888, click apply changes, and it should be working next time you launch the game.

Welp, I tried that. It actually seemed to make the screen tearing even worse somehow. :( Think.. I'm just going to wait until I get a better PC before playing this game.

That's too bad, but apparently the reason it doesn't work is because even if you're using the nvidia gpu to render the game, it still has to go through the intel gpu because the laptop screen is connected to it. The only good news is that if you have a way to connect your laptop to a monitor or tv there should be no tearing problem, but that's assuming your laptop has an hdmi output, and you don't mind having to play in one place.

[Quazarstar]

Originally posted by edgarska:

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Welp, I tried that. It actually seemed to make the screen tearing even worse somehow. :( Think.. I'm just going to wait until I get a better PC before playing this game.

That's too bad, but apparently the reason it doesn't work is because even if you're using the nvidia gpu to render the game, it still has to go through the intel gpu because the laptop screen is connected to it. The only good news is that if you have a way to connect your laptop to a monitor or tv there should be no tearing problem, but that's assuming your laptop has an hdmi output, and you don't mind having to play in one place.

Yeah, I get that, bit of a shame.

On the topic of using an external monitor, the HDMI for my laptop is actually broken right now xD I was thinking about doing that also. But my laptop does have a lightning port so I'm probably going to try get an adaptor over the weekend to let me use a HDMI with that. Hopefully that works, thanks for all the advice. ^^

[edgarska]

Originally posted by Quazarstar:

Originally posted by edgarska:

That's too bad, but apparently the reason it doesn't work is because even if you're using the nvidia gpu to render the game, it still has to go through the intel gpu because the laptop screen is connected to it. The only good news is that if you have a way to connect your laptop to a monitor or tv there should be no tearing problem, but that's assuming your laptop has an hdmi output, and you don't mind having to play in one place.

Yeah, I get that, bit of a shame.

On the topic of using an external monitor, the HDMI for my laptop is actually broken right now xD I was thinking about doing that also. But my laptop does have a lightning port so I'm probably going to try get an adaptor over the weekend to let me use a HDMI with that. Hopefully that works, thanks for all the advice. ^^

There are 2 more fixes that I hadn't found until now. One of them doesn't require any software, and it involves launching the game using geforce experience instead of directly clicking the shortcut or using steam. However this only fixes it for some people, not everyone.

The other one is a program that someone made, you download it, run it before running the game and it fixes the tearing, however because of the way it works the framerate will be cut down to 30fps if it can't reach 60, it's basically like vsync. But apparently that program was made obsolete with the fall creators update of windows 10.
And I just realized your post says you have Windows 10 build 16299, which is from a long time ago, check in windows updates to see if there are updates you haven't applied, there should be a pretty big one.

Edit: Disregard that last part, the new update is not available in the regular updates yet so you can't get it. However the problem should have been fixed in the fall update, which you already have.