image tearing

[ashenfang]

Hey all. I know that image tearing is a result of the monitor "getting ahead" of its self before the vid card is ready to display. In most of my games I get quite a bit of image tearing. What is the best way to remedy this? Most of my games I run at 1024x768 with everything on high 2aa (battlefield 2, CS:S, HL 2 ect), except for fear, which is at medium settings. Just about every game I get tearing that is bothersome. Just looking for some ideas to fix this.

[ArgentumX]

Try turning on Vsync. The tearing you are seeing is because your video card is "getting ahead" of your monitor. Say your monitor has a 60 hz refresh rate, which means your monitor can refresh the screen 60 times in one second, you can do 60 fps without "image tearing", if your video card outputs over 60 fps your monitor can't keep up and you get the tearing you are talking about. Turning Vertical sync will limit you to 60fps on a 60hz monitor. I tend to leave Vsync off because I like to get above 60fps and the tearing really doesnt bother me.

[Burdman27911]

Like ArgentumX said, turn on Vsync. I noticed bad tearning once I made the move to LCD, so now most of the time I'll use Vsync when I'm playing games that it bothers me in.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it works this way. If you have a refresh rate of 80hz it will lock the fps like so

80fps
40
20
10
5

So that it would be syncronized with the monitor, it doesn't particularly mean that you'll always be at the same fps as your refresh rate.

[ArgentumX]

Right you wont always be the same as the refresh rate but you will have a frame rate cap so to speak. For example 80hz= 80fps limit.....but you can get anywhere from 0 to 80 fps. There is no interval progression e.g. 80, 40, 20, 10, 5

[Violator]

Right you wont always be the same as the refresh rate but you will have a frame rate cap so to speak. For example 80hz= 80fps limit.....but you can get anywhere from 0 to 80 fps. There is no interval progression e.g. 80, 40, 20, 10, 5

Yes there is, if double-buffering is used. A typical example would be 80 (max) dropping to 40 if 80 cannot be sustained, dropping to 20 if 40 cannot be sustained.

Triple-buffering allows the 'anywhere between 0 to 80'.