Framerate. Nothing quite takes me out of a game than sudden drops in fps (glitches too). Its's irritates me to hell when you're in a busy scene and the frame rate stutters and chugs along. Plus it something that negatively affects the way I play them, so yeah.. definetely that.

Screen tearing is also bloody annoying but is the lesser of the two evils.

Framerate drops. I never use V-sync. It locks the framerate to the monitor. nor care if the image splits.

frames

Framer rate can render a game unplayable. Screening tearing doesn't.

Framerate drops by far. They make gameplay more painful, screen tearing does not. Screen tearing looks bad whenever it happens but it has zero effect on gameplay. Also, usually it's not very noticable: The only game I've constantly noticed screen tearing in is Titan Quest, and I bet I could get rid of that by turning V-Sync on. Too bad that V-Sync has a nasty effect on framerate... Anyway, it's pretty bad tearing in TQ and still it doesn't break the game's visuals at all, so in the end it's not that bad so I don't really mind.

But there are lot more framerate drops than screen tearing in current games.

If there was as much screen tearing than framerate drops in games I think most people would prefer framerate drops. But hopefully screen tearing are now really rare of even almost absent in next gen games.

I am not sure most people really know how awful constant screen tearing is. Would you prefer constant screen tearing in Dead Rising 3 instead of constant framerate drops? framerates drops are not big deal realistically with most of players. The majority of the greatest rated games have framerate drops and it didn't prevent them to be the best games or/and most sold games. Any game with 90% time of screen tearing would be almost unplayable. Is there even such a game?

1/2. Frame Rate Drops/Aliasing
3/4. Texture pop-in/screen tearing

people here are saying frame rate because you can use X to fix screen tearing, but then that is you saying that you don't like it when you have to suffer frame rate drops but you don't play games with screen tearing, it's not answering the question.

If I asked you which would hurt less, getting shot in the face and getting slapped in the face. if you Answer getting shot in the face because it's unlikely to happen to you because you don't live in an environment with guns... it's just not actually answering.

So in games where you have to suffer either Frame rate drops or Screen tearing affected frames which is worse... for me who games primarily on consoles on a 42inch screen about 5 feet from me it has to be tearing, I actually think that frame dips at some times are used cleverly (exploding boss's in ikaruga anyone?) But tearing during cutscenes I find massively jarring out of the experience, there isn't 2 consecutive frames in aliens:CM on the 360 which don't have some degree of it.

Your analogy was a bit extreme. But yes, exactly my thoughts on the matter.

extreme helps make points :D

but yeah if you're sat down at your console on a huge ass tv and you get into a cutscene which looks like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElE_8OY91FA I would take a reduction in frame rate any day of the week.

Assassins Creed and Aliens CM both suffer this during cutscenes and gameplay on the 360, not to that extreme because they're slower moving, but once it starts to catch your eye it's very distracting from the game.