Flashing and pixelated screen viewing Streaming sites.

[Warren Davies]

I've tried doing windows update, updating my graphics driver and turning off hardware acceleration. When I visit Amazon Music or Prime or Netflix my screen flickers and pixelates. I dont mean in large pixelated blocks, I mean the coloured individual pixels all over the screen all mixing up and flashing. The longer I leave it on the less I can see so I have to close the site before I can't see anything at all. If I login on remote access the screen is normal, so it must be graphics card related. Anybody got an idea what this might be? Once I visit one of the sites it doesn't matter if I leave by navigating off the site, it continues. Only stops if I close the page.

Sample of flashing screen, youtube link


Dell Precision T3610
Nvidia Quadro K4000 3GB DDR5
Xeon E5-1650 v2
32GB DDR2 Ram

 

[Warren Davies]

It appears turning down the resolution from 1920x1080 to 1600x1024 stops this happening. I really need to stay on the better rez as I work a lot on Autocad. Any ideas?

 

[TrojanWhore]

Your video is set to private, you'd need to set it to public but unlisted for us to be able to see it, but what you're describing sounds like graphics card memory failure (although disabling hardware acceleration should mostly solve it tbh if it was that).

If so, you might get away with lowering the clockspeed on the card, but on the other hand you ca pick up another k4000 for around £20 if it has enough performance for your uses (or something significantly faster for a bit more)

What version of Windows are you runnning (assuming you are running Windows)? - the card and rest of the system are from around 12 years ago or more, so drivers for e.g. Windows 10/11 are a bit hit and miss

 

[Warren Davies]

Your video is set to private, you'd need to set it to public but unlisted for us to be able to see it, but what you're describing sounds like graphics card memory failure (although disabling hardware acceleration should mostly solve it tbh if it was that).

If so, you might get away with lowering the clockspeed on the card, but on the other hand you ca pick up another k4000 for around £20 if it has enough performance for your uses (or something significantly faster for a bit more)

What version of Windows are you runnning (assuming you are running Windows)? - the card and rest of the system are from around 12 years ago or more, so drivers for e.g. Windows 10/11 are a bit hit and miss

I’m on Windows 10. I’ve changed the video link to unlisted so it can be viewed now. Assuming it is what you say I think I’ll have to look for something a little better. Shame as it’s good enough for my needs if it was working properly.

 

[TrojanWhore]

Can see the vid now, thanks. Looks like it could be that, although the whole screen strobing isn't quite what I'd expect (it's usually more just pixel corruption in high contrast colours - magenta, lime green etc)

It could easily be the display cable as well, do you have a spare you could test with?
Also, if you have a spare SSD/(or even HDD), you could try a fresh install of windows and see if the problem is still there (hell, even a live distro of linux running from USB would probably be enough to test with)

Edit: if going for something as an upgrade, if you can find a 4GB GTX 670 that should be about twice as fast and probably <£50, but they'll be quite rare (standard model was 2GB).
780ti is 3GB and about twice as fast again for around £75-90, for a bit more power consumption (250w for card only, I'd expect a precision workstation would still be able to handle that easily!)

But DEFINITELY isolate the cause before spending any money you don't want to - it could very easily be a faulty cable or something!

 

[Warren Davies]

Great thanks, I’ll try the cable first of course. Then I might transfer the card into another pc to see if it works in that one. Then last resort will be the SSD which I do have. But more time involved in that one though. Thanks for your help, I’ll keep you informed what I find out.

 

[Tetras]

It appears turning down the resolution from 1920x1080 to 1600x1024 stops this happening. I really need to stay on the better rez as I work a lot on Autocad. Any ideas?

What kind of monitor do you have and how is it connected? Are you using DVI?

When did this start?

 

[Warren Davies]

Just a 27” AOC monitor with a DVI connection, why? The monitor is DVi only but the card is DVI and display port.

 

[Warren Davies]

Just a 27” AOC monitor with a DVI connection, why? The monitor is DVi only but the card is DVI and display port.

Unbelievable! It was the cable!. I'd never have thought that would work. Changed the cable to one I'd have thought was a cheaper one and hey presto, so flashing. Thanks