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Flashing screen with crossfire 4870 ??

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27 May 2007
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Kent
As title,
I get a pulsing flicker on my screen shows up more on dark scenes in games.
Has anyone seen this before?
It is like the screen is getting the wrong hrz, to me it seems maybe my power supply is on its way put???
 
What drivers are you using?

I had screen flicker when using the 9.1s but have yet to see it with the 9.2s.

I noticed that turning Catalyst AI off stopped it, but I think that means you only use the one GPU.

You could also try playing with vsync on, see if that stops it.
 
Is it in particular games? and specific textures?
I had this with CoH ground textures, it would flicker white to normal, randomly, sometimes straight away, sometimes after an hours play, the cause was a partial DX10 incompatbility, by disabling DX10 and forcing it to run in DX9 this fixed the problem. To do this (in CoH) in the gfx options set the shader from DX10 to either high or low (which is DX9) and hey presto
 
I am using 9.1 and the pulsing looks more like bad mains voltage.

I will try V-sync on but that makes the mouse feel laggy on FPS games unless there is a trick to get around this.
I will try 9.2 again i did not get on with them at first felt there was a drop in performance
 
I've just had a game of Defense Grid and noticed that the dreaded flashing is still present when using both GPUs. I switched off Catalyst AI and it stopped, but that can only be a temporary solution as turning off one GPU defeats the purpose.

If you Google '4870X2 screen flicker' you can see that a fair few people are experiencing the same issues.

I have no idea why it's happening so if anyone has any ideas or knows anything further I would appreciate a little light shed.
 
Well I've just been experimenting with the CCC settings while playing Left4Dead and the only way I can get the flickering to stop is by disabling Catalyst AI altogether.

The screen flicker I had with the 9.1s was a lot worse than it is with the 9.2s. Using the 9.1s I had a flicker that was sort of flashing between white and the normal image, probably about 20 times a second or so. This happened in Left4Dead and TF2.

With the 9.2s it's more subtle, not flashing white, more a very faint flicker that looks like an old analogue TV signal with poor reception, plus there is sort of horizontal lines, about an inch or so thick, that start at the top of the screen and move slowly downwards. I only really see this in dark scenes, which in Left4Dead is pretty much all the time.

It's rather annoying that I have to disable the second GPU in order to play the game.

Anyone got any ideas?
 
Strange, try setting all your settings as detailed here, see if that helps, though I think theyre pretty much all default tbh

Thanks for the link, I've read through it but unfortunately nothing it suggested helped with my problem.

I've been reading up on a few people who have experienced the same problem but none of them have a definite answer as to how to solve it.

Does anyone have any suggestions as I am at a complete loss as to what to do next?
 
BF2 is the worse game for it that I have seen/played with my 4870x2. it's almost like alternate frames are at a different brightness/gamma, you can see it on the loading screens background and in dark areas when playing.

Disabling AI/2nd gpu in devmgmt fixes it, which is not ideal but ok for BF2 as one gpu is more than enough. Can also minimise it by using vsynch or locking the fps in game to multiples of 60.

I also sometimes see it on l4d but only really on loading/menu screens and never noticed it in game.
 
At the moment, in L4D, I have vsync enabled and I don't see it in game, but I do see it on the loading screen when the little red dial in the top right corner animates - my screen flickers in time with the animation.

Enabling vsync is the only thing that seems to reduce/stop it, so far anyway.

I have made a post on the Sapphire forums about it so hopefully someone there will shed a little light, they're usually pretty good at solving problems so we'll see how they do with this one ;)

If I get anywhere I'll certainly post back.
 
Well I have gone back to 9.2 and It is a little bit better but still there, and Analogue t.v is a great way of explaining this fault "shoot1st"

I have heard about under clocking things on these cards but surely that,s a bit dodgy ??

Also Chaosophy you said try multiples of 60 so 120fps should be good ??
 
Well I have gone back to 9.2 and It is a little bit better but still there, and Analogue t.v is a great way of explaining this fault "shoot1st"

I have heard about under clocking things on these cards but surely that,s a bit dodgy ??

Also Chaosophy you said try multiples of 60 so 120fps should be good ??

I tried the multiple's of 60 thing earlier today, using TF2, both at 60 and at 120fps, however it didn't solve it. Hopefully you'll have better luck though.

I haven't heard of anything dodgy related to underclocking, when I tried it it didn't solve it but again, hopefully you'll have more luck.
 
Is it not under volting the VDDC chips how would you go about that ?

I'm not one for playing around with voltages myself, but I would imagine it'll be a setting in the BIOS, I'm sure someone will offer some advice on that if you want to give it a whirl.
 
I tried the multiple's of 60 thing earlier today, using TF2, both at 60 and at 120fps, however it didn't solve it. Hopefully you'll have better luck though.

I haven't heard of anything dodgy related to underclocking, when I tried it it didn't solve it but again, hopefully you'll have more luck.


Yeah the multiples of 60 thing doesn't totally fix it but in BF2 it is a more bearable alternative to v.synch.
 
A bit of progress; I've just connected my monitor up via HDMI (that's haitch DMI by the way ;)) and the problem seems to have gone, so far anyway.

I've tried L4D and TF2, both with vsync disabled, and haven't seen any problems at all so fingers crossed it stays that way.

I'm not saying it'll definitely solve your problems but it might be worth a shot.

Edit: Just to add, I'm using the Sapphire CCC 9.2s.
 
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