[Help] Mysterious screen tearing behavior

[Levee44]

Hi all!

I have a Dell Inspiron 7559 notebook with a Geforce GTX 960M GPU, and when I play Half-Life or Doom 3 BFG there is serious screen tearing. However, it disappears when the computer goes into battery saving mode. I'm sure that the games still use the nVidia GPU.

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Thanks.

 

[caswow]

you might be way above screen refreshrate while beeing on powerline . when you pull the plug the gpu might downclock and the fps might be near screen refreshrate. almost the same effect like vsync. thats my guess

 

[Levee44]

Oh, thanks! What I don't understand is why doesn't forcing vsync via drivers work. Doom 3 BFG even has an in-game limit to 60 FPS option, and that doesn't work either. Geforce Experience's "Battery Boost" FPS limiter does work, but that can only be used when the computer is actually not plugged in.

Oh, the joys of 3D gaming : )

 

[bystander36]

Try playing in borderless Windowed mode. This would use Window's built in v-sync type methods, and might work for you.

 

[Levee44]

Thanks! Good idea. Doesn't work, though. Although Quake 2 doesn't tear in a normal window.

I realized what the roblem is: for some reason, these games require a frame rate below the refresh rate.