What Is Screen Tearing And How Do You Fix It?

Screen tearing is a common issue that occurs when there is a mismatch between the frame rate of the graphics card and the refresh rate of the monitor. This can result in the image on the screen appearing to be split or distorted. Screen tearing can be particularly noticeable in fast-moving games or videos.

There are several ways to fix screen tearing, including enabling V-Sync in games or using adaptive sync technologies such as G-Sync or FreeSync. Updating graphics card drivers and ensuring that the monitor is set to its native refresh rate can also help to reduce screen tearing.

Related: Best Gaming Monitor: The Top 6 Displays in 2023

Is v-sync the solution? Should I turn it on or off?

One approach to eliminating screen tearing is forcing the entire frame onto the display simultaneously (called “v-sync”). While this eliminates tearing, it does so at the expense of reducing frame rate, which might make your game unplayable, and it also increases lag since you have to wait for the entire frame to render before a new one can be drawn.

The best way to reduce screen tearing is to find a reasonable middle ground between continually rendering full frames and never.

Although V-sync can solve screen tearing, it can cause or promote input lag because vertical synchronization prioritizes monitor refresh rate over GPU frame rate. Input lag occurs simply because you force the GPU to be in sync. If your monitor has a refresh rate of 120Hz and you enable V-sync in the GPU settings, it will impact its overall performance due to the neglected FPS.

Nvidia Control Panel & Adaptive V-Sync

When frame rates fall below the VSync frame rate cap, stuttering occurs. As soon frame rates fall below the cap, VSync reduces them to the nearest level, such as 45 or 30 frames per second. You can often notice screen tearing when VSync is turned off in-game, and when the camera or viewpoint moves horizontally or vertically, this causes screen-wide horizontal tears.

Using a managed control panel from graphics card manufacturers gives you much more granular control; e.g., Users of GeForce GTX video cards can enable Adaptive VSync either globally or per individual game. This option can be found in the NVIDIA Control Panel’s ‘Manage 3D Settings’ tab. Adaptive VSync switches VSync on and off dynamically to maintain a more stable framerate, so it is a much more managed solution if you use a GTX graphics card.

AMD Enhanced Sync and NVIDIA Fast Sync

You can replace VSync with AMD Enhanced Sync if you have a newer graphics card. These two technologies display the most recently completed full-frame, preventing tearing while introducing no input lag. The lower the input lag, the higher the frame rate.

When using Fast Sync or Enhanced Sync to keep your frame rate at the highest possible refresh rate and less likely tearing to occur in your graphics card’s frames, your FPS should be at least double the maximum refresh rate of your monitor. The input lag is significantly lower than with just regular VSync enabled but not as low as with VSync disabled.

How To fix Screen Tearing

• Deactivate the game mode and full-screen optimizations on your Windows machine
• Check Graphics Drivers: If you cannot update graphics, try using the latest drivers to fix the problem. Do update your graphics to the latest build or downgrade them if it’s not in the same way. There are numerous cases where not using the latest drivers causes the issue because the game you are playing is also optimized for running with the latest one.
• Disabling Smooth Scrolling: Smooth scrolling is a feature that enables you to scroll more ‘smoothly’ However, this feature has often caused tearings on users’ screens. This can be fixed with a simple tweak to make it scroll smoother. The majority of Windows 10 users have the feature enabled on their computers. This glitch seems to be a glitch that could only be removed with a restart on your computer. You can check out the bug if you’re still using it before you start it again when re-using the smooth scrolling feature. For most users, disabling the feature is a simple fix for this glitch.

• Turning off the frame limit: The frame limit feature is known to cause screen tearing in some cases. It can limit the number of frames a game can output to a computer monitor. It’s a handy feature to use if you use low specifications hardware. Turn the Frame Limit off on whatever game you’re playing or the application you are using. The steps may differ from game to game, and don’t forget to restart your computer before changing the settings. This is a convenient feature for you to use in any of your low specs
• enable / disable NVIDIA VSync
• Turn off game mode & full-screen optimization: Microsoft added a feature-rich Game Mode in the most recent Windows update. The mode includes system optimization, gameplay recording, one-touch screenshots, and other features. Many users reported that the mode was causing problems for them. In some instances, active Game Mode does cause the screen tearing issue.

• Try replacing the resolution and the refresh rate: There is evidence that the resolution of videos and games can decrease game performance. The refresh rate can also be reduced to improve the performance of the graphics. Lowering the resolution allows the graphics card to run more smoothly on the screen. You can complete the process by restarting the computer whenever you change the resolution or refresh rate settings. The change is not the same as in other PC systems, and the settings in different graphics card settings are different. To ensure that the changes are working properly, return them if they don’t work correctly.
• How about changing the FPS? Changing FPS (frames per second) results in smoother, more realistic gameplay. If your game or video settings are not correctly configured, make them in line with your monitor’s graphics card specifications. Try to locate the change in frame rate or FPS (frame per second) setting and lower it by the tiniest amount to see the difference. If a monitor has screen tearing, make sure the settings are matched.

Quick Tips & Myth busters

• Frame rates of more than 60 fps do not cause screen tearing. The screen tearing occurs when the buffer switch and refresh cycle are out of sync. The two cases are entirely different. This issue can occur at any frame rate because the buffer switches are out of sync with the refresh cycle.
• Screen tearing does not directly result when you record game clips. It is just a result of the buffer is out of sync. It does not have a vendetta against a particular video game or people who play games. Poor coding by hasty developers resulting in poor display output and limited full-screen optimization options within games are usually the culprits.

• Most browsers have an inbuilt Smooth Scrolling Feature. If you are facing a screen tearing issue in Chrome or any browser you use, you can turn off the Smooth Scrolling feature in the browser.
• Find graphics cards that deliver maximum performance and a monitor that supports various in-game menu options and fps modes rather than the other way around.
• Pay particular attention to the display’s refresh rate when you purchase them, and do not ignore display adapters’ settings that it will support
• Most people experiencing screen tearing issues resolve it with carefully chosen GPU, associated graphics card driver, and compatible display units. It is that simple!

Final Thoughts

As you might have realized, Screen tearing is just a distortion that occurs when your Graphics card and display unit are out of sync. Every avid gamer out there would have experienced it at some point in time. Thankfully, the fixes to most tears are pretty straightforward!

Get a monitor display hardware that supports GSync along with the latest NVidia graphics card (GPU), and it almost feels like a piece of cake.. well, almost…

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