Screen tearing
Also searched as: screen tearing · tearing · torn frame · screen tear
What it means
Screen tearing is when the top and bottom of your screen show pieces of two different frames at once, leaving a visible horizontal 'tear' line across moving images.
More detail
It happens when your GPU sends a new frame to the monitor partway through the monitor's refresh — the display ends up drawing part of the old frame and part of the new one. It is most obvious when your frame rate does not line up with the monitor's refresh rate. There are three honest fixes, each with a trade: VSync locks the GPU to the refresh (no tearing, but it can add input delay and cap your frames); a variable-refresh display (VRR — G-Sync / FreeSync) lets the screen wait for each frame, which removes tearing without the VSync delay; or capping your frame rate a hair below the refresh keeps things mostly in step. Tearing is a sync problem, not a performance problem — more FPS on its own will not fix it.
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