Apparently I didn't look hard enough (nor long enough, nor fast enough - insert "That's what she said" comments here ^^^^). Looks like the drivers for AMD's Catalyst Control Center vsync force options have been bugged in Win7 (and assuming Win8) for quite a while now, and a 3rd party software like D3Doverrider is needed for this kind of functionality.
Yeah, that I've been doing (think I must have scoured the first 30 Google results). I'm beginning to lose faith Not the end of the world. If anyone else knows of this issue, I'd be glad to hear of it.
I'm wondering how I might be able to enable vsync in the Underfoot client. I've tried adding vsync=1 and vsync=TRUE to the eqclient.ini file (this is how P99 does it so I figured it would be similar), but that doesn't work with this client. I've also tried forcing global vsync through my AMD software and specifically for the game, but it's like a button that the elevator company didn't bother to wire because it's not important. It does nothing when pressed even though it implies functionality. I made sure my FPS cap matches my refresh rate in the game settings as well, and I've got such horrible screen tearing that you'd think I never touched any setting.
Is there something I'm missing or can it just not be done in Underfoot?