As of latest patch, V-Sync has now been added to the game options.
The new "VSync" option in the video settings menu allows you to remove
screen tearing. There are three options: ON, OFF and SMART.
Source
Note: See edit for previous solutions.
First of all check that you have installed the last drivers from your video card vendor. If you have an ATI, like me, these are the recommended preview drivers that improve performances for RAGE and Battlefield 3: AMD Catalyst™ 11.10 Version 2 Preview Driver
In addition I applied the Mid-End config suggest in this Steam's thread (all credits to FusedCore). There are other three config, choose one based on your system configuration, look at the comments and try to customize it a bit.
I have an ATI Radeon 6850 with 1GB and 3 core CPU, and now the popping issues are less evident. There is still some occasional 1/2s freezes or some stuttering but it helped me a lot.
Finally today (09 October 2011), it has been released the first support patch.
The new "Texture Cache" option in the video settings menu allows you
to increase the texture cache size to keep more texture data in video
memory.
If the Texture Cache is set to LARGE then RAGE will keep more texture
data in video memory. This may not only significantly reduce blurry
textures and texture popping, it will also allow complex scenes to be
rendered with more texture detail.
Update 10/10: I tested the latest patch and texture popping seems not too bad with LARGE Texture Cache; it is instead dramatic with the other setting. To compensate they have introduced a really nice continuous micro-stuttering so now the game is unplayable for me.
Update 11/10: This "magical" setting for game launch parameters helped a lot in my case (ATI Video Card) both with texture and stuttering issues. Give it a try:
+jobs_numThreads 0
Best Answer
Since you're talking about the PC version of RAGE, from Steam, no - this doesn't require Games for Windows Live. When I start my copy of RAGE via Steam, I get launched straight into the game without having to log into Games for Windows Live.