Screen tearing

Tearing (of English. To tear, rip '), German as single image tearing, is an undesired effect (called an "artifact" ) when displaying moving images, such as on a computer monitor. The effect can occur both when watching movies as well as computer games.

This effect can occur when the body and the display of the frames are not synchronized with the monitor display. The viewer sees then possibly several parts of successive frames at the same time, that is, the images appear " torn ." This can, for example, avoided by introduction of the single images are alternately written in two memory areas, of which only one is visible. These storage areas are then synchronously (usually 60 FPS) switched with the refresh rate of the monitor during the vertical sync, causing the screen change " invisible". This principle works in the same way at 30 or 15 Hz, the monitor displays each image longer. Particularly disturbing the tearing effect is at higher resolutions, such as on a 4K screen. Depending on the structure of the monitor panels can be vertical or horizontal tearing or both occur simultaneously.