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. 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. What causes screen tearing is pretty simple: your GPU renders frames at a different rate than your monitor displays them. 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.
The good news is that screen tearing is essentially a solved problem. Thanks to variable refresh rate technology, monitors can sync their refresh rates with a graphics card's frame rate, effectively eliminating the possibility that the monitor will show two frames at once. The major names in VRR are NVIDIA G-Sync and AMD Free Sync. Neither of those should be confused with V-Sync, another widely available technology designed to thwart screen tearing in video games. V-Sync forces the GPU to wait until the monitor is ready before handing over a new frame, but this can cause issues of its own, including input lag and stutter.
Source: Engadget · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing