RefreshRateTest

Screen Tearing Test Online

Check if your display suffers from tearing and verify your VRR sync settings.

Focus on the moving vertical bar. If it appears broken or jagged, you have screen tearing.

Increase speed to make tearing more obvious.

Understanding Screen Tearing

Screen tearing is a visual artifact in video display where a display device shows information from multiple frames in a single screen draw. The artifact occurs when the video feed to the device is not in sync with the display's refresh rate.

The Cause of the Tear

Imagine your monitor draws the screen from top to bottom. If your GPU finishes rendering a new frame while the monitor is halfway through drawing the old one, the monitor will switch to drawing the new frame for the bottom half of the screen. Because the camera or objects in the game have moved between those two frames, the top half and bottom half of the image will not align perfectly, creating a horizontal "tear."

How to Eliminate Tearing

There are several technologies designed to eliminate this annoying artifact:

  • VSync (Vertical Sync): The oldest solution. It forces the GPU to hold the frame until the monitor is ready to start a new refresh cycle. While it eliminates tearing, it can introduce noticeable input lag and cause stuttering if your FPS drops below your monitor's refresh rate.
  • G-Sync (NVIDIA) & FreeSync (AMD): These are Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) technologies. Instead of forcing the GPU to wait for the monitor, they force the monitor to wait for the GPU. The monitor dynamically changes its Refresh Rate (Hz) on the fly to match the exact FPS being output by the GPU. This eliminates tearing without the severe input lag penalty of VSync.
  • Fast Sync / Enhanced Sync: These technologies allow the GPU to render as fast as possible (reducing input lag) but only send the most recently completed frame to the monitor when it's ready to refresh, dropping the excess frames.

Testing Your Setup

If you have a G-Sync or FreeSync monitor, ensure the feature is enabled in your GPU control panel and in the monitor's physical OSD (On-Screen Display) menu. Run the test above. If the bar moves smoothly without breaking, your VRR technology is working correctly.

Frequently Asked Questions

Screen tearing looks like a horizontal split or 'tear' across your screen where the top half of the image doesn't align with the bottom half. In the test above, if the vertical green bar appears broken or disjointed as it moves, you are experiencing tearing.

It happens when your graphics card (GPU) sends a new frame to your monitor while the monitor is still in the middle of drawing the previous frame. The monitor ends up displaying parts of two different frames at the same time.

The most common fix is enabling VSync in your game settings, which forces the GPU to wait for the monitor. However, VSync adds input lag. Better solutions include using a monitor with G-Sync (NVIDIA) or FreeSync (AMD), which dynamically sync the monitor's refresh rate to the GPU's frame rate.