Screen tearing on desktop

krome4284

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Jun 25, 2014
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When I'm on my desktop, there will be horrible screen tearing when I have windows open for partial of the screen. It does not screen tear when I'm in full screen for anything and this is no screen tearing when watching videos in full screen or playing games. I have no idea where to start and when I google up a solution, there is nothing that comes close to my issues. Here are my pc specs:


Intel Core i7-4770K 3.5GHz
MSI Z87-G45 Gaming ATX LGA1150
Corsair Vengeance 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM
Gigabyte Radeon R9 290X 4GB WINDFORCE
Corsair Builder 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply

I recently switched cases, but this happened BEFORE i switched. So when my new case came in, I cleaned everything with an electronics air cleaner as well as I could. Still my problem seemed to only worsen. I figured it couldnt be the gpu or monitor since it would happen everywhere and not just the desktop. It has to be drivers but idk what to do specifically and some help would be very grateful.
 
Solution
It almost sounds like your using the window generic drivers. That's what mine did after I restored the hard drive, before reinstalling the preferred drivers.

Have you looked in the device manager to see what drivers are currently being used?
 


What drivers am I looking for exactly? I only got into pc gaming since last year. Everything seems fine with the device manager. No missing drivers or anything.
 


When you select "Display Adapters," does it list you R9 290X? Once you right click on it and select properties it should detail the drivers your using.
I would start by updating the drivers and changing the resolution.

You should probably be using the AMD Crimson drivers, You didn't say what OS you had so you should go hear and select "Desktop Graphics," "R9 Series," etc.....

http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Download and install the latest drivers. Also, check to make sure that you haven't accidentally duplicated your display. You can hit the "Window Key + P" together and it should cycle through the display options. Right click on open space in the desktop and select properties, or personalize, depending on what OS your using. Try changing the resolutions, and adjusting the display options. I'm sure its something simple.
 


It just says AMD Radeon R9 200 series under display adapters, but I use the amd gaming evolved app to check and update for drivers and right now I am using the latest crimson drivers. I use windows 10 right now with a second display being my big screen tv for watching movies and videos. Very slight tearing happens on the big screen but nowhere near as bad as the monitor. I've checked hdmi cables for both the monitor and big screen but they are both perfectly fine and when using a 3rd cable nothing changed. Changing resolutions did nothing either sadly :/
 


I don't know brother. I have heard that Windows 10 has a bad habit of overwriting your drivers. You may want to google that. There is a tool that will rid your machine of unwanted drivers. Its called DDU. After installing Windows 10 I had an issue my self were I couldn't set the resolution. The problem just went away one day after I restart.

http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/211515-windows-10-attempts-to-install-drivers-for-hardware-you-no-longer-have

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/windows-10-screen-tearing/a520fe63-9a88-4994-be39-5d08930edab1?auth=1
 
Solution
I found that resetting the display driver will temporarily fix the issue for me.
Just press Windows Key + Ctrl + Shift + B.
Your screen will go blank for a second but that's normal.

Now go into your GPU driver settings and make sure that GPU display scaling is turned on. For some reason, Windows 10 like to turn that off after updates.

Hope this helps! feel free to tell me if i need to elaborate on any of this.