Windowed mode tearing horribly after upgrade windows 10

[AlHollandiyah]

I have been playing TS3 for a while now, and I could always play in windowed mode without much issues. However, after upgrading my laptop to windows 10, windowed mode tears up my screen so bad that I can't even click the ok or cancel button on the new settings and have to use escape! I am an avid multi-tasker, so having access to windowed mode is something I would really like to get working! I have been googling for hours on what to do, but every issue I found seems to have a different solution and so far nothing I tried helped! I checked my fps and that seems normal, around 50-60 as far as I can tell. Also when my screen is not focused on the sims it runs fine in windowed mode, only when it is active, thus becoming unplayable! I hope anyone here can help me get this fixed?

Here is a pastebin of my dxdiag before anyone asks me to post one!

https://pastebin.com/AKgFESBh

[puzzlezaddict]

@AlHollandiyah  This isn't really my area of expertise, but there's one obvious place to start.  It looks like your graphics drivers are almost three years old, and the AMD card at least has a new one available.  You can look for updates from HP or from the manufacturers of your cards.

If new drivers don't fix the problem, maybe more information would help.  It would be good to know what you've done so far.  Clean folder test?  How does the game run in fullscreen?  (I know that's not a permanent fix, but perhaps it's useful information.)  Do you use an fps limiter, and which one, and does messing with the settings make a difference?

[AlHollandiyah]

I just tried downloading new drivers. Point of confusion: My laptop mentions that I have the AMD Radeon HD 7600M Series, which aren't available on the driver download page. It does have a number of 76xx drivers but not 7600. The specifications on the webshop where I bought the laptop said 7670. So I tried the latter as they were the only ones available, but they made my laptop considerably slower so I rolled that back.

As for a clean folder: It was a clean installation after updating to windows 10, so how clean can a folder be? Full screen seems to work fine, but it is really annoying to switch between full screen and the rest of windows, including a lag. So I really hope to get it fixed!

[puzzlezaddict]

@AlHollandiyah  Honestly, I'm not sure how to help.  Perhaps @roberta591  will have some thoughts.

[roberta591]

@AlHollandiyah First you need to know what graphics chip is in your laptop. Google gpuz and download this utility. Gpuz will tell you everything you need to know about your graphics chip and more. When you know what chip you have go to AMD drivers and download the latest WHQL driver you can find. WHQL means the driver has been evaluated by Microsoft. The latest Windows 10 drivers for HD 7670M I saw at AMD is dated 7/29/2015. My guess is these drivers are considered legacy. In other words these graphic chip drivers will probably no longer be updated.  A lot of hardware was orphaned with Windows 10. Make sure you are using the AMD chip when you play the game. While your computer may continue to be useful as a student computer if you can't get drivers for your video chip your computer may only run older games that aren't as demanding as newer 3D graphical games. How old is your HP laptop? Tearing is an issue of frame rate miss match. If the driver has vsync try 60fps. Maybe enabling triple buffering may help. Worth a try.

[AlHollandiyah]

Somewhere in between me rolling back the wrong driver, tweaking more settings and rebooting a ton of times, all of the sudden my game decided to work with me on the windowed mode. According to all my specs my graphics chip is the HD 7600M and I believe you are pretty accurate by saying it is orphaned and no longer updated. That driver listen in my dxdiag is the latest for it that I was able to find.

As far as making sure I use the AMD chip, I already have the laptops energy profile on max performance, and in switchable graphics make sure to set up ts3 as high performance as well. I think I just need to live with the fact that it will not run as good as it did before the upgrade to w10. Thank you very much for all your advice, it is much appreciated!

[AlHollandiyah]

Hmmm. I guess I spoke too soon. Yesterday it worked without tearing, today it was back. I am going to try to find a pattern of when it happens and when (if at all) the issue is not there. If nothing helps then I will just have to settle for fullscreen....

Edit: it seems to work fine when enabled from inside a save game but not in the main menu. Meh. I think Ill have to make due with it.

[roberta591]

@AlHollandiyah  I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 that has ATI graphics chip that is now legacy. I do not play 3D games on it as I only use it for business so I will continue to use it until I see smoke coming out of it. I do have a newer Dell XPS laptop but the lighted keyboard is bad and the battery is no good. I have a replacement keyboard and when (if) I get around to replacing the keyboard it may replace the older laptop.

[AlHollandiyah]

So far it seems to be the main menu, the loading screen and while saving that the screen is very teary. As soon as those are finished I can play normally now. I get around this by clicking on my taskbar to see where I need to click to proceed out of the main menu, and it is a workable workaround. It's probably all I will be able to do with these outdated drivers, so as long as I can play I will settle for it! Thanks for all your help and thinking along with me!