Have you ever found yourself deeply engrossed in a high-stakes game, the thrill of epic battles, the suspense of solving intricate puzzles, adrenaline pumping, only to have your gaming bliss shattered by a jarring visual glitch? You are not alone! Many of the passionate gamers around have faced screen tearing. This usually occurs when the video you have through your system cannot sync with the display’s refresh rate. It’s overwhelming to be in an intense battle and then have your screen tear. That may make it difficult to view what is happening and disrupt your gaming experience.
The good news is that as every problem has a solution, so does this. So, we will go through several methods to fix screen tearing. From changing resolution rates to turning off any frame limits, you can try a solution to eliminate this problem. However, before delving into solutions, we will briefly discuss what exactly screen tearing is and unravel the technicalities behind it.
So, let’s banish screen tearing from your gaming adventures once and for all!
1. What is Screen Tearing?
Sometimes, you notice unpredictable behaviour from your monitor. You will see an image or specific frame distorted, and the root behind these troubles is your monitor or the graphics card on your desktop PC. Screen tearing is a phenomenon that makes an image unable to be interpreted by the user. Screen tearing in gaming can cause input difficulties and output loss. For instance, in a highly competitive game, a little glitch can determine the fate of your round.
Besides gaming, screen tearing is a significant concern since it creates a distracting visual experience. If you consistently face screen tearing, you can suffer eye strain and significantly impair your productivity, making it difficult to work correctly.
Fortunately, there are many methods available to fix this issue. You can address it by a combination of software and hardware enhancements. You can modify settings on your operating system, game, or graphics card control panel. You can also make some hardware changes to solve this graphical glitch. We will discuss all of these screen-tearing solutions later in this article.
2. What Causes Screen Tearing?
Screen tearing is a visual artefact that occurs in video displays when there is a misalignment between the frame rate of your graphics card and the refresh rate of your monitor. This mismatch will show parts of multiple frames simultaneously, resulting in a torn or disjointed image. You will often see fast-moving games with numerous objects, like racer games and explosion scenes or something that needs high FPS for a smooth performance.
Simply put, there are two significant causes of screen tearing, including configuration issues between the graphics processing unit (GPU), which generates images, and the monitor, which displays them. These difficulties can emerge as visual abnormalities when the frame rate of computer-generated images differs significantly from the refresh rate of the monitor. This results in image artefacts during transitions between frames as the screen travels through a single display cycle. You can determine the severity and duration of the screen tearing distortion by the difference between the frame and refresh rates.
Screen tearing can also occur even when the frame rate of computer-generated graphics aligns with the refresh rate of the monitor. In such instances, the lack of synchronization between the image generation and their display on the monitor might result in distortion.
Another possible reason could be high FPS. Sometimes, rapid changes in on-screen content or very high FPS can boost the chances of screen tearing because the monitor may start displaying a new frame before the previous one is fully drawn.
The capabilities of your gaming monitor, such as refresh rate and adaptive sync technologies (G-Sync or FreeSync), can also cause screen tearing. If your monitor’s refresh rate is low, it may struggle to keep up with your graphics card’s high FPS, leading to image distortion.
3. Buttery-Smooth Gaming: The Best Screen Tearing Solutions
If you are experiencing screen tearing, here are five solutions listed below to troubleshoot.
Adjust the Screen Resolution
If your monitor resolution settings are not adjusted appropriately, it can also lead to screen tearing. It might become more evident when the monitor’s resolution is set higher than the information being presented, especially during high-motion circumstances.
To fix screen tearing, try changing the resolution of your display.
There are several ways to achieve this, including altering it through Windows settings or the control panel of your dedicated GPU. Adjust the resolution and refresh rate of the monitor to ensure they are compatible with the settings for the computer’s GPU. Under the hood, you can also set the display refresh rate to its maximum value. The adjustments of resolution can refresh rates and fix the issue significantly.
Enable the Variable Refresh Rate (VRR)
VRR is a feature that supports shuffling refresh rates in image rendering. There is some advanced VRR capability embedded in the graphic card and monitor to accept the refresh rate of your screen as maximum. You should enable adaptive sync technologies like G-Sync (Nvidia) or FreeSync (AMD) on your monitor and the graphics card to modify the refresh rate to match the frame rate. Toggle them off and on in the driver settings to find if the change of settings helps to reduce screen tearing. Check that your monitor and graphics card support these technologies.
Update the Graphics Drivers
The next step is to check your computer’s graphics drivers to ensure that the latest driver versions are installed and correctly set. You can find complete information on each driver from online resources.
Additionally, you still face screen tearing issues unexpectedly after a system update. In that case, it’s essential to analyze whether the problem is due to an incompatibility with the most recent version of the display driver. You can confirm this by downloading and installing an outdated driver version to rule out this possibility.
Disable ‘‘Smooth-Scrolling’’
For Windows-based computer users, “smooth scrolling” is another feature that disrupts your screen a little when scrolling to make sure there is no roughness. This feature can also interfere with the operation of the GPU. Thus, if you have enabled this, it could adversely affect your gameplay, potentially increasing screen tearing problems.
Here is how you can turn off this feature:
- Go to the Control panel on your computer.
- Open System settings and navigate to the “Advanced System Settings” menu. Click on “Advanced” and then tap on the “Performance” option.
- Find and uncheck the “Smooth Scrolling” box from the available boxes.
- In case you have unchecked this box and it’s made the screen tear even worse. Try and enable it again. It could solve the issue altogether due to a glitch.
Turn off the “Frame Limit”
In many gaming and programming laptops, there is a “Frame Limit” option available in their settings that allows you to limit the number of frames the gaming software delivers to your monitor. While this is a valuable feature for users with older technology, it can occasionally cause screen tearing.
You may turn off this feature to fix tearing. Access the game or application you’re using and turn off the Frame Limit function. Remember that the method of doing this may differ from one program to the next. After making this change, restart your computer before evaluating whether the screen tearing problem has been remedied. If screen tearing was caused by frame restriction, this step may help lessen or eliminate it.
4. Final Verdict on Tear-Free Gaming
Screen tearing is a frustrating issue that can disrupt your gameplay and even affect productivity in other applications. Understanding the causes of this trouble, including configuration mismatches, high FPS, and monitor capabilities, is the first step towards banishing tearing and distortions from your gaming adventures.
We have recommended some screen tearing solutions in this article to help you eliminate graphics issues and configuration problems in the existing equipment. However, if the problem is associated with the display monitor’s inability to handle your graphical demands, the only solution will be a monitor upgrade.
So, go ahead, apply screen tearing solutions, and get back to the thrill of epic battles without the disruptions!