What is the “tearing” effect ?
The tearing effect is a defect of the animation caused by a wrong synchronization with the game refresh rate and the video mode refresh rate. It generally appears as a horizontal image split line, on the top of this line you see the previous game frame, on the bottom of this line you see the next game frame. If the game and the video refresh rate are only a little different the tearing split line is slowly moving up or down. If the refreshes are very different the split line is moving randomly. The tearing effect is mostly noticeable in games with a continuously scrolling background.
