You'll get screan-tearing yeah. That's why many console games have v-sync enabled (limits the maximum framerate equal to the television's refresh rate and syncs them). Unfortunately unless games utilize triple-buffering (and they never do), vsync can result in reduced frame-rates as it's more work on the GPU to try and syncronize the output with the display's refresh rate.
Some developers seriously have no idea and seem to whack on vsync anyway even if they don't need to, which kills the framerate needlessly. Heavenly Sword is a prime culprit of this.
I was reading a specialist UK magazine on PC Gaming the other week, and it was going into great detail about the settings for tweaking your graphics card... And what the guy said about VSYNC is with no explanation or anything.. Turn it off it only slows down your games.... No Swearing!... No mention of almost a necessity if you have an LCD. So this doesn't suprise me what you say about the developers.