Sorry in advance if this is the wrong forum section for this post.
 
I don't know how to describe the phenomenon very well (Google searches do not give results that show the same issue), but I am getting what I would call as a screen tear when I am playing games in borderless windowed mode (i.e. it doesn't happen in fullscreen).
 
The effect looks something similar to a video on YouTube that is not mine titled "Gears of War 4 V-Sync Flickering Issue" by Glenn van Dormolen. But the tears, or flickers, or whatever they are, are thicker horizontal bars, and usually show the desktop through said bars, or if a window is behind the game, outlines of the window edges. I've attached a photo of the tear and it sort of reminds me of interlacing lines. The tearing comes and goes for the duration of play, but my mind is telling me it's more apparent during active camera movement over idle camera. This tearing is not specific to any particular game, but I've never noticed such tearing on the desktop or on hardware-accelerated web content such as Twitch. For whatever reason, the tearing also does not occur when I am tabbed away from the given game.
 
Card is 1080TI SC Black (thanks, step-up program), attached to a GSYNC 100hz ultrawide 1440p monitor and a second non-gsync 144hz 1080p monitor, both through displayport. Tearing only occurs on the ultrawide, where I place games, naturally.
 
Nothing about my unit is overclocked since I got the card earlier this week. Card itself is stock out of box.
 
Intel 6700k
32GB ram
Maximus VIII Hero
Windows 7 64-bit
 
I tried a DDU clean uninstall with most recent drivers, and that seemed to fix the problem for a day, but it came back when I changed primary monitors and reset GSYNC, and has persisted since.
 
My suspicion is that this problem is either related to some sort of performance-power throttling or with GSYNC, but when I run EVGA's OC benchmarks, I don't have any of the problems mentioned above in the benchmark. In fact, OC detects no artifacts. I do feel like the tearing occurs more frequently in connection to power% dropping. In a given game test, I usually hover around 60-65% power% with occasional tearing, but a ton more as the card randomly drops to 30-35% power% for about 10 seconds. Temps in these tests never got above 68C. Also if I put the card in K-Boost, there seems to be no effect on frequency of the tearing, but the tears travel down my screen much faster. That is, the tears moving speed seems to have a positive relation to power.
 
I haven't really troubleshot turning off GSYNC since I want the card to run with it on in all use scenarios. I did set second monitor to 100hz to no effect. 
 
I'm not sure what else to try.
 
Edit: Didn't realize URLs would be autoclipped. Uploaded photo and described YouTube video link.

Sajin
#1 Disable g-sync on your ultrawide to see if the issue goes away.
#2 Set your ultrawide to 60Hz to see if the issue goes away.
#3 Is your ultrawide using a vesa certified dp cable? If no, I suggest picking up a vesa certified cable such as  one.
#4 Does the issue occur when testing all available outputs on the video card?

 
Hello, thanks for replying.
 
I can test #1 and #2, but what happens if its GSYNC or refresh rate that is the issue? I hesitate to not use features of a monitor I bought for those particular features. 
 
#3, I've just taken a look at VESA's list of displayport cables (surprisingly short list), and don't see mine. So I've just ordered the one you linked (via Amazon, and 2-meter length).
 
#4, I didn't think to test the other displayports. I don't think either of my monitors take dvi though, and I'd have to rummage around for a cable, it's been a while. Will check when new cables arrive later tonight (what a world we live in, same day shipping).

Sajin

brandel
but what happens if its GSYNC or refresh rate that is the issue?

Guess you'll need to play in fullscreen mode.
 
If disabling g-sync fixes the issue I would suggest reporting the issue to nvidia. You can file a bug report here.

+1
I believe it is gsync only because when I put battlefield into windowed mode once for a few minutes to do something with afterburner and noticed the monitor screen doing strange things. Went back to full screen viola nothing.

brandel
Hi,
 
After a few more tests, I did conclude it was GSYNC in combination with my configuration. Third displayport resulted in the same problem. I thought the new cables were fixing the problem; it was working fine for half a day... until I tried changing primary displays again as a test. As a last resort, I got hold of an old GTX 970 and still had the same problem. The problem did go away when I turned off GSYNC.
 
Annoyingly, I ended up testing updating Windows 7 to Windows 10, to annoying result. The problem hasn't recurred since I updated, in the various scenarios that I was previously having problems with. So it does seems like it was a GSYNC problem in a Windows 7 environment, or at least, that is what I am closing the books with.
 
I thought about doing the survey that Sajin linked, but I don't know how I would describe how to replicate the issue. "Plug it in in Windows 7 and activate GSYNC, and wait a few minutes..."? 
 
Anyhow, just wanted to say, I resolved the problem and thanks for the suggestions here. Time to change everything about the default settings in Windows 10.

Glad to hear your problem is resolved after updating to windows 10.