Screen tearing is a nasty problem, but it's thankfully one that's been solved.
Most gamers have experienced the dreaded phenomenon of screen tearing. One moment, you're battling enemies in a fantasy world, and the next, you're looking at a jagged patchwork of imagery. Your in-game avatar's torso is separated from its legs and head, and the path in front of you is likewise torn asunder.
This is called screen tearing, which is among a collection of visual artifacts that can plague your gaming session. While far more commonly encountered with PC gaming, it can sometimes be an issue for console gamers, too. The good news is that we not only know exactly why screen tearing happens, but also how to fix it.
The issue is primarily caused by a mismatch between the speed at which your computer hardware renders frames of video and the rate at which your display can show them to you. But thanks to a combination of technologies that help coordinate frames between your graphics card and monitor, screen tearing is no longer the scourge it once was.
What causes screen tearing is pretty simple: your GPU renders frames at a different rate than your monitor displays them. Imagine the image rendering pipeline like a two-person assembly line, where your GPU "hands" video frames to your monitor. The problem is that many GPUs aren't tethered to the monitor's speed. Sometimes a GPU will outpace the monitor, rendering up to hundreds more frames each second than the monitor can display.
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