Screen Tearing Threshold Calculator

See exactly how the mismatch between your game frame rate and monitor refresh rate produces screen tearing. With VSync off, tear seams appear at the beat frequency of |fps − refresh| per second. This tool computes tears per second, the percentage of whole clean frames, a sync verdict for VRR / G-Sync / FreeSync, and the safe fps cap that keeps a tearless image.

🎯Real Display Presets

🖥Frame Rate and Refresh Inputs

Average game frame rate (fps)

Frames the GPU renders per second, VSync off.

Monitor refresh rate (Hz)

How many times the panel redraws per second.

Sync mode

Determines whether tearing is possible at all.

Vertical resolution (scanlines)

Panel height in pixels, used to place the tear line.

VRR range minimum (Hz)

Lowest refresh the adaptive sync window covers.

VRR range maximum (Hz)

Highest refresh the panel and cable can drive.

Safe cap headroom (fps below max)

Buffer under the VRR ceiling for a tear-free cap.

Result rounding

Controls how result cards display numbers.

Tear seams per second 0 beat frequency, VSync off

Clean whole frames 0% frames drawn without a seam

Sync verdict -- based on mode and VRR band

Recommended fps cap 0 to stay inside the tear-free zone

🔢Formula Snapshot

|f−r|tears per sec

1−d/mclean fraction

f = rtear-free match

max−hsafe fps cap

📊FPS vs 60 Hz Tear Rate

Frame Rate	Refresh	Tears / Second	Clean Frames	Reads As
60 fps	60 Hz	0	100%	Perfect match
65 fps	60 Hz	5	92.3%	Slow drift
72 fps	60 Hz	12	83.3%	Visible band
75 fps	60 Hz	15	80.0%	Noticeable
90 fps	60 Hz	30	66.7%	Fast tearing
100 fps	60 Hz	40	60.0%	Heavy tearing
120 fps	60 Hz	60	50.0%	Severe
144 fps	60 Hz	84	41.7%	Constant

📋FPS vs High Refresh Panels

Frame Rate	Refresh	Mismatch	Tears / Second	Clean Frames
100 fps	144 Hz	44 Hz	44	69.4%
120 fps	144 Hz	24 Hz	24	83.3%
144 fps	144 Hz	0 Hz	0	100%
165 fps	144 Hz	21 Hz	21	87.3%
200 fps	144 Hz	56 Hz	56	72.0%
200 fps	240 Hz	40 Hz	40	83.3%
240 fps	240 Hz	0 Hz	0	100%
300 fps	240 Hz	60 Hz	60	80.0%

🗃Sync Mode Comparison Grid

Sync Mode	Tearing	Added Lag	Stutter Risk	Best FPS vs Hz	Verdict
VSync Off	Always	None	Low	Any	Fastest, tears
VSync On	None	High	High	fps ≥ Hz	Smooth, laggy
Adaptive VSync	Below Hz	Medium	Medium	fps ≥ Hz	Tears when low
Fast Sync	Rare	Low	Medium	fps ≫ Hz	Needs big fps
G-Sync / FreeSync	None in band	Very low	Very low	min to max	Best all round
VRR + VSync cap	None	Very low	Very low	cap under max	Ideal setup
VRR above max	Returns	None	Low	capped only	Cap the fps
VRR below min	LFC frames	Low	High	use LFC	Raise the fps

⏱Refresh Rate to Frame Budget

Refresh	Frame Time	Scanout Window	Match FPS Cap
60 Hz	16.67 ms	16.67 ms	60 fps
75 Hz	13.33 ms	13.33 ms	75 fps
120 Hz	8.33 ms	8.33 ms	120 fps
144 Hz	6.94 ms	6.94 ms	144 fps
165 Hz	6.06 ms	6.06 ms	165 fps
240 Hz	4.17 ms	4.17 ms	240 fps
360 Hz	2.78 ms	2.78 ms	360 fps

⚙Formula Breakdown

Tears/sec = |fps − refresh|With VSync off, a fresh frame is swapped in mid scanout every time the frame boundary crosses the display. That crossing rate equals the beat frequency between fps and refresh. At 90 fps on 60 Hz that is |90 − 60| = 30 tear events per second.

Clean fraction = 1 − d / mLet d = |fps − refresh| and m = max(fps, refresh). The share of whole, seam-free frames is 1 − d / m. At 90 fps on 60 Hz: 1 − 30 / 90 = 0.667, so about 66.7% of frames are clean.

Beat drift = |fps − refresh| HzThe tear line does not stay still; it scrolls up or down the screen at the beat frequency in Hz. A 30 Hz beat means the seam sweeps the panel 30 times a second, which the eye reads as a moving band.

Tear position = scanlines × phaseWhere the seam sits vertically depends on the timing phase inside the refresh. Multiplying the panel scanline count by that phase estimates the pixel row where the current tear falls.

VRR check: min ≤ fps ≤ maxInside the adaptive sync window the refresh follows the fps, so there is no mismatch and no tearing. Above max the mismatch and tearing return unless the fps is capped; below min the panel uses Low Framerate Compensation and stutter risk rises.

Safe cap = VRR max − headroomTo stay inside the tear-free band you cap frame rate a few fps below the panel maximum. With a 144 Hz ceiling and 3 fps headroom the recommended cap is 141 fps.

💡Tearing Control Tips

Match beats mismatch: Tearing scales directly with |fps − refresh|, so the cheapest fix on a fixed-refresh screen is an in-game or driver fps cap set equal to the refresh rate. At 60 fps on a 60 Hz panel the beat frequency is zero and every frame is a clean whole frame, no VSync lag required.

Cap just under the ceiling: On a G-Sync or FreeSync display, enable VRR plus VSync and cap frame rate about 3 fps below the panel maximum, for example 141 on a 144 Hz screen. That keeps you inside the adaptive band where refresh tracks fps, so you get zero tearing with near-zero added lag.

Screen Tearing Threshold Calculator eliminates guesswork when trying to identify visual glitches in PC games, because now it displays for you exactly how frequently your image will fracture depending on what connection exists between your monitor’s refresh rate and frame rate. A very subjective annoyance becomes an explicit number you can address. Most folks figure screen tearing is some sort of failing graphics card or just plain bad luck. Nope, its physics. Why? Because of timing.

Youve got your monitor drawing an image from top-to-bottom at a constant rate… Say, sixty times per second. Whenever your graphics card has a frame ready to go, it puts it up onscreen. But what if these rates doesn’t match? What if, for instance, your monitor is midway through drawing its current frame when the card suddenly replaces it with a fresh one? You’ll get a horizontal seam: Half your screen displays one moment’s worth, while the rest displays another. That’s a tear.

What Causes Screen Tearing

Plug your settings into the calculator and see just how many tears per second that mismatch create. This leads us into our core metric: beat frequency. When two waves collide, they create a new wave with a frequency equal to difference between the original two,” physics explains. And screen tearing? Same thing. At sixty hertz with ninety frames per second, what’s the difference? Thirty. That means thirty tear seams every second, and you’ll see them. This tool spits out absolute difference for you.

So doubling your frame rate to one hundred twenty on that monitor doubles the tearing, sixty seams a second. It happens twice as often. And it looks worse because it happens more frequent than before. But it’s not just the frequency that’s important (it’s the coverage). Even if there’s a lot of tearing, most of your frames will be completely clean. The calculator tells you what percentage of your frame are completely unseamed. On sixty hertz running at ninety fps, around two thirds of your frames will be perfect. Everything else is going to be torn.

Why does that matter? Because we’re sensitive to changes in motion when we watch things. Having a tear line slowly roll across your screen in a fast camera pan is much worse than having an entire still image go wrong. How quickly that tear line moves over your screen is called the beat frequency. The speed also change between a slow and a frantic flicker. That’s where variable refresh rate technologies such as FreeSync and G-Sync comes into play.

By adjusting their refresh rates in real time to align with what the graphics card is sending, those systems eliminate that issue entirely, provided your framerate remains within the panel’s supported limits. That’s what it measures: your input relative to those VRR bands. When it’s within range, the number of tears drops to zero. However, once you go outside the max, you are back to tearing. This happens because the monitor has no more room to extend itself to keep pace with your frame.

That’s the most useful part of all of this, the recommended fps cap. While many of us game with unlimited frame rates, doing so on a fixed refresh screen is to seek nothing but more tearing. If you’re running with VRR, the calculator recommends capping slightly lower than the max your panel can handle. Otherwise, it recommends setting your cap equal to the refresh rate. Either way, this little tweak removes the entire beat frequency completely. You lose a tiny bit of peak performance for a huge boost in visual stability. A few frames smoother here and there versus an image that never tears itself apart.

In the end, it’s all about clocks. The monitor you’re using ticks at one rate, while the graphics card ticks along at another. The calculator will get those two in sync. Whether you’re trying to make your single-player campaign look right, or you’re tweaking some driver setting in a competitive shooter, when you know what that number is, you don’t have to guess anymore. You can just see right where the seam is, then yank it back into place. And finally, the game looks the way it should of. The horizon remains whole again.