Comment 64 for bug 600178

I was able to remove almost all screen tearing by doing the following:
Disable flipping (aka. double buffering) in nvidia-settings
Enable vsync in nvidia-settings
Enable 'sync to vblank' in Compiz (under the OpenGL section)
DISABLE 'detect refresh rate' in Compiz (under Compositing section)
Set refresh rate in Compiz to 60Hz (or whatever your monitor's frequency is) (under Compositing section)
DISABLE 'undirect fullscreen windows' in compiz (under Compositing)
Enable legacy fullscreen support in Compiz (under the workarounds section)
DISABLE 'don't wait for video sync' in Compiz workarounds
DISABLE 'force buffer swap on repaint' in Compiz workarounds (it won't change tearing but it will make everything slow)

The 'force synchronization between X and GLX' does not seem to make any difference.

I say it removes "almost" all tearing because there is still screen tearing at the very top of my screen, but never anywhere else. The top 85 lines of my screen still tear quite frequently, but the rest of the screen is fine. I've tried switching between version-current and version-current-updates for my graphics driver, I've tried using X updates from the x-swat ppa, I've tried enabling forced sync between X and GLX, but none of those things seem to make any difference at all.