Anyone else really care about V-sync?

Cause I sure do. I have no idea about you guys, but I encounter tearing all the time in games. It doesn't sound like people out there really care about V-sync compared to things like AA and AF. Am I the only one experiencing major tearing issues? I'm running an E6750 with an 8800GT, and half-life 2 tears up all over the place on me. Why is this? Can someone tell me the cause of tearing and what I can do to make it go away? Of course, you can just turn on the V-sync but I don't want the performance hit. And for some reason, not very many people out there enable V-sync. Why is this?

Because, depending on the settings of your GPU, you will cut your FPS to half when you go under whatever your V-sync is set at....LordEC911

its you monitor refresh rate basically it cannot keep up with the amount of frames it is getting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_synchronization

Why does V-sync happen? Is it a problem with my monitor refresh rate? Cause I highly doubt that it happens because I have a weak PC. I got a nice Dell 2007wfp, so I'd be dissappointed if it was my monitor...phan1

V-sync happens because you either turned in on in the video card driver or in the options are of the game.