It's an interesting question: why, in our cross-platform game comparison videos, do Xbox Series X/S titles sometimes present with screen tearing, while PS5 and Switch 2 equivalents never do the same? After all, performance between base PS5 and Xbox Series X is often similar, so what is the Xbox console doing differently?

There is a good reason, actually. In short, while PS5 normally enforces full v-sync to avoid visual artefacts, printing a full screen line by line top to bottom only when a new frame is ready, our understanding is that Microsoft's Xbox libraries can be more permissive. Developers are able to "flip" the framebuffer to draw in more recent information as long as it occurs soon after a frame has started to be rendered, leading to the characteristic tear lines in the upper portion of the screen - mostly unnoticeable to the human eye. The advantage is that you avoid stutters, where the system has to wait for an entire new refresh cycle to draw a new frame, at the cost of visual continuity.

Looking at an example of this can be instructive. Imagine we have a 60fps game that therefore requires a new frame to be rendered every 16.7ms. This is is our "frame budget" - everything has to be complete by the end of those 16.7ms, otherwise we just have to wait by rendering the previous frame again. If a frame is over budget by a small amount - eg it took 17.0ms to render - then we have a decision to make. We're already rendering the previous frame out to the screen again, so we can either wait for this to complete, then show the new frame, or we can start drawing the new frame right away.

Do you notice screen tearing on Xbox games?

The Xbox paradigm suggests that we just draw the new frame right away, as only a small amount of the previous frame will end up on screen, right up at the top where it's rare to have much critical information, and we avoid printing that repeated frame. The Sony approach, as we understand it, favours producing complete frames even if they're late. What is better overall is a matter of preference, which is why Sony and Microsoft have different takes on the matter. Microsoft have historically used it - dating back to the Xbox 360 - while its presence on PlayStation ports is rarer. Full-screen tearing on both systems can happen of course, but we're focusing more on the distinctive "tearing in the top 10 percent of the screen" we typically only see on Xbox systems.

However, there is an argument to say that screen tearing is less useful in 2026, as average game performance has raised significantly and one-off late frames are less common. If every frame is over budget, then screen tearing doesn't prevent it - it just makes the stutter happen a little later than it would otherwise.

The prevalence of VRR (variable refresh rate) displays also helps obviate the need for screen tearing, as these monitors and TVs synchronise frame rendering with the screen updating. As long as frame times are within a more generous VRR window (at least 40fps on Series X/S or 48fps on PS5 when running in 60Hz mode), there's no mismatch between frame-rate and a fixed refresh rate that screen tearing can solve.

Ultimately, while screen tearing has its place as a technique, it's less relevant these days and may disappear entirely in Microsoft's next-gen Project Helix console. After all, VRR has become a table stake feature for many TVs, and has long been a core feature of even non-gaming monitors. If that future does come to pass, screen tearing will be a thing of the past - and perhaps that's for the best.