What causes game screen tearing?

Question

Here's some background information.

About a year ago, I bought an ATI Radeon x1950 Pro for my computer. It was running fine for about 3-4 weeks when all of a sudden I was getting excessive screen tearing on World of Warcraft. I had a warranty on it and got the same exact card, but this time I also bought a 600 watt power supply.

It worked for a couple of months, but it did it again. So what I did was open the case and put a floor fan which blows into the computer. It helped it, but when I leave my computer on for about an hour or so, it starts doing it again. I resolve this problem by restarting my computer. At times, my graphics card really gets hot even with a fan blowing into it.

My question is, what causes screen tearing? Is it the GPU, PSU, Graphics card?? I've never had this problem with any other Graphics Card except this one.

Yes, I have V-Sync on.

Answer 1

it could be just your current graphic card

Answer 2

maybe you need to get a new CPU like just the casing and all that stuff that has a cooling fan built in, that might help cause those kinds of fans help it stay cool, you cant have a ordinary fan blowing onto it because it wont help that much, also you can change the settings on the game to help with the screen tearing bit...