Weird DirectX 8 water testing issue

[Werewolf]

For testing purposes, I load all my maps on my testing laptop to A) make sure all content is packed, B) see how the map runs on an 8 year old laptop that shouldn't be able to run TF2 anymore. My laptop has all of it's settings turned down as low as they can go. It runs in DirectX 8.0. If my laptop can run a map, I can be confident anyone can run the same map.

Here's my problem. When I load the map I'm currently testing, the water on there is flat white. If I jump in the water it renders normally, but the surface is just flat white. Like so:

That's 2fort's water BTW. Here's that same water in 2fort:

Same white texture.

Now here's the issue itself. If I load the same maps in DirectX 8.0, all lowest settings (except resolution) on my PC, then the water renders normally:

So my question is, given that both my PC and and laptop are running TF2 with the exact same settings (with the exception of screen resolution), why does the same water texture appear different on different machines? Secondly, how can I fix this if possible?

 

[Urban]

From what I recall, when I had this issue on an old laptop I put -dxlevel 81 in the launch settings and it fixed the white water bug as well as some props appearing completely black. I believe it was a problem relating to certain integrated graphics cards.

 

[Werewolf]

I believe it was a problem relating to certain integrated graphics cards.

Well my laptop runs on an "Intel 4 Series Express Chipset" whereas my PC has a nVidia GTX 1080, which is a slight difference in power (My GPU alone has more ram and processing power than my laptop! )

I don't suppose you know of a list of effected intergrated graphics cards? It may be a tiny issue, it if I can fix it then I might as well try. Otherwise I'll see how my laptop runs with '-dxlevel 81' instead of '-dxlevel 80'.

 

[Urban]

I had this issue a long time ago now but I don't recall ever seeing a list of particular cards. In a thread on the now defunct steam forums there were a fair few people on laptops/budget PCs who reported this issue, and the running of dx8.1 instead of 8.0 seemed to fix it for vast majority of people.

 

[Werewolf]

Yeah I just tested my laptop running 2fort and my map, using 8.1 and the water appeared normally. Guess I'll either have to change to 8.1 for testing routinely, or live with a minor bug.