Because of this I am getting screen tearing with makes the game unplayable.

What sort of display card have you got?
Can't you enable vsync for the game in the display cards control panel?

Probably because it was written when few GPUs were powerful enough to cause screen tearing ;)

Anyway, it gets along fine with Vsync enabled through NCP or CCC.

Check the sticky thread "Fixes To Common Problems" for a way to enable Vsync. It involves downloading a tiny 3rd-party program that runs in the system tray and forces Vsync in the game. It worked for me, even when forcing it in my graphics card control panel did not. I have an ATI card.