• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

Flickering using extended monitors - ATI -

=VTA=MANFACE

=VTA=MANFACE

=VTA=MANFACE

Associate
Joined
20 Mar 2007
Posts
1,909
Location
Swansea Wales
Flickering using extended monitors -58XX -

Ok...well...

Bought a new power supply, Corsair HX 850W, when I was getting problems with my 5970 to replace the Jeantech Modular 700w - I was going to upgrade, now is better time, than any -

But, I still get flicker on the second monitor, when using, extended display and duplicate display, when you drag a window about on the main monitor. I don't get it if I use the second monitor on it's own.

After doing searching on these forums and others, it seems, that quite a lot of people are suffering from this - I'm not sure if this is just a windows 7 problem -

Who else suffers from this ?

And has anyone who did, fix the problem ?

Or, are we going to have to wait for a fix from ATI/Microsoft ?

Your help is very much appreciated. Thanks in advance.
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure whether it's helpful, but I drive dual displays and occassionally get flickering on the secondary display (normally with youtube/iplayer on the primary). Unfortunately, that's using a 9400GT/9600GT on Mac OS X. The primary display is driven through mini-displayport, which is the only other similarity there might be.

I don't have a fix, either. :P
 
same problem here on 5770, although it only happens if I overclock it, the issue seems to be the card changing clocks from what i can see, guess its a driver problem
 
It is a driver issue and only occurs when overclocking.

What happens is this. When overclocking isnt enabled the card reverts to 400/120 when it is idling to save power. When you have overclocking enabled it reverts to 157/300 and this isn't enough to cope with more than a single monitor, the result being the flickering you see.

You will be ok overclocking with one monitor but unfortunately no more unless you change things so the card doesn't drop into its power saving state (I did read a way how to do this but didn't bother, as honestly my 5870 is fast enough that it really doesn't need overclocking for the time being).
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Use http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1641/AMD_GPU_Clock_Tool_v0.9.26.0_For_HD_5870.html to set clock speeds, this will disable powerplay, see if it still flickers, make sure you don't have any other OC software running when using GPU clock tool.
Click to expand...

I did try this but the the flickering remained, but then again I was trying to monitor frequencies with afterburner so that is probably why :P.

Think I will keep it at stock for now though, no point in using the extra power just to get afew more frames in games that already have good frame rates :).
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Use http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads/1641/AMD_GPU_Clock_Tool_v0.9.26.0_For_HD_5870.html to set clock speeds, this will disable powerplay, see if it still flickers, make sure you don't have any other OC software running when using GPU clock tool.
Click to expand...



OMG !!! Flickering has stopped !!

Nice one mate.

But this is an overclocked version from sapphire ?

What should I do ? Ask for a normal clocked one, or wait for drivers, if you think ATi will sort it ?

What is the cause of it ?

Thanks mate , you're a star :D
 
Yeah I'm sure it will be fixed soon ;) using GPU clock tool means you get no power saving features so the card is running on full juice all the time, nothing wrong with this but its nice to have a cooler running card when idle.

Below is a guide on how to setup profiles in the CCC so you can activate them when you want without the need for GPU tool. I think the main culprit for the screen flicker is when the memory clocks up and down so you could just change that and still keep the powerplay feature for the GPU core.

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showpost.php?p=712063&postcount=1

Edit. An overclocked card has nothing to do with the screen flicker, its ATI's powerplay feature causing the issue so it needs sorted their end.
 
Last edited:
It could take a few months for a proper fix if the problem is at ATI's end, if Sapphire can fix it via a BIOS update it will probably be much sooner but until then you'll just have to make do with the DIY fixes.

I hope all the people who recommended you immediately rush out and buy a new power supply without doing any thorough testing learned a lesson from this.
 
Last edited:
mmj_uk said:
I hope all the people who recommended you immediately rush out and buy a new power supply without doing any thorough testing learned a lesson from this.
Click to expand...

I doubt it lol - but at the end of the day personally I'd be far happier with a corsair PSU in my high end rig than a jeantech jobbie which is probably just a rebadged enhanced electronics unit with hit and miss capacitor quality.
 
Last edited:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showpost.php?p=15355296&postcount=54


the flickering is a problem with powerplay as I said, not quite sure why, you have to remember that with a new hardware implementation of powerplay you often have driver issues, ATi, Nvidia, AMD and Intel with new powerplay versions have had various issues with old mobo's and OS's that don't natively know exactly whats going on.

You've got various power saving tech from in the bios, to the chip's themselves, to the OS software, to the specific hardware software and it takes time for it too all iron out.

Being able to disable is a very welcome thing, and not under load you won't be getting full load power usage just at higher clocks. My 5850 from idle in power saving mode, to overclocked speeds and load voltage, but still in windows doing nothing only add's around 30W to my power usage. As it uses something around 30W idle, its now using around 60-70W, and full load it still uses a heck of a lot more than that.

Drivers are irritating, for every person who knows what they are doing, theres 5k people who use one screen and don't know a thing so adding extra options to drivers creates problems.

Nvidia and ATI should have a "power saving tech on/off" button in drivers, and also forceable D3D v-sync and trip buff that simply works without question, neither do, because the other 5000 will play around, screw up games and not know why or how they did it.

I do wish they'd do uber advanced drivers you can only dl via logging in and registering as an advanced user who won't complain to AMD when the end user messes with extra settings.
 
Just to add to this, I'm experiencing the same issue. I use 2 monitors (one 1920x1080 in landscape and one 1050x1650 portrait) and before I clicked 'enable ati overdrive' I had no problems, now I have issues, even after I disabled ati overdrive.

With ati overdrive enabled it's just all weird shapes and flickering on either monitor, but it's definately a driver issue as said above, you can interact with the flashing shapes lol (by dragigng a window over them and temporarily 'wiping' desktop etc over them). But now, after disabling it, I'm getting issues in l4d, every so often the screen will flicker, like the vertical scan is going mad, then the game freezes up a bit, then it's ok. Do I need to edit/reset anything?.

How very gay.

edit; 5850 runing 9.11, win 7 64 bit, idling at 54 deg..
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom