Hmm... Personally I've never tried it but I might give it a go just to see if it helps any. Thanks for the heads up..
As for the screen tearing, do you mean when gaming? Normally if a game is causing a lot of screen tearing then enabling Vsync either via the game or the graphics card control panel.
Freezing can often be attributed to heat. Do you know what temperature your GPU or CPU is hitting whilst gaming? I've known pc's to have higher temps when gaming than some of the free stress testing programs like Prime95 so it's always worth checking.
Use something like this app:
http://www.hwinfo.com/ Try gaming and then 'alt-Tab' out of the game and check what your temps are like. Please post the idle and at stress values.
Another thing we could check is Windows corruption. Find command prompt, right click on it and run as administrator. Type:
sfc /scannow
Press enter and await results.
If it comes back with corrupt files it couldn't repair then in the same command box type or copy and paste this:
dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
Press enter and again wait for results. This one can take some time so please be patient.
If the above scan is successful then go back and run the first scan again (the sfc one)