the monitor thing's weird, not sure exactly what's causing it. I'm using a laptop.

the initial problem was really bad screen tearing, I read a bunch of forum posts and most of them said install nvidia drivers, so I did. After I installed the drivers, the monitor was just black when I plugged it in. Don't recall whether I installed the free or proprietary drivers, think it was the free ones. I think it's the only issue I've ran into that consumed more than a few minutes