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rscuderi
Journeyman III

Color Flickering - Windows 10, Direct X 12

I have a Radeon R9 200 and have had no trouble with it for quite some time.

About a year or so ago, Windows 10 introduced an update that caused this inverted color flicker to happen any time I alt-tabbed in and out of any game. It wasn't really so much a problem as really annoying.

The solution at the time was to disable "Full screen optimization" as an option for each game executable. This was fine for a while.

With the introduction of DX12, the problem has returned and the same solutions don't fix the problem anymore. If I go back to DX11 the problem goes away, so it's definitely something about DX12, but I don't know if that's necessarily a "Microsoft" problem or not.

What I am not sure of is whether or not this is an AMD-specific problem with DX12 or not, but any help to try and troubleshoot this would be appreciated.

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7 Replies
Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello,

Sorry but i did not understand what you mean by inverted colours flickering?
Can you explain it a bit more please or post a screenshot of the effect you get, thanks.
I would like to help but i did not caught the issue you having.

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rscuderi
Journeyman III

Here is a video of what I'm talking about.

DX12 flicker - YouTube

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blazek
Volunteer Moderator

Does this only happen in certain games or all programs?

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Any game that uses DX12.

If I use DX11 I can get around it with ‘disable full screen optimization‘ in W10.

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello,

Thanks you for the video. ^^
So i imagine you are referring to the colour/brightness changing and adjusting while alt-tabbing in the game.

From what i remember, DX12 mode manage the screen in newer way, running the games in a "windowed mode".
Doesn't matter if you apply full screen or windowed mode in the game options, the core of the game in DX12 will still run in this kind of hidden mode in background.
That's why, i suppose, if you would have some kind of issues with DX11, you could disable the full screen optimisation and solve the issue.

So i do not know if the issue is driver related, the timing of the colour, the brightness is not responsive when alt-tabbing.
Or simply a normal behaviour of the panel, when the screen need to switch from these full/windowed modes, especially for DX12.
It need maybe some time to recalibrate the image, especially if the panel is quite old.

An idea would be to test different refresh rates and check the colour brightness response.
Or check with another display port, if you can and the screen support multiples display input.

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So, in doing some testing on this, I found... something that makes no sense. If I use the Windows 10 Xbox application to record footage from within the game, as long as the recording is running, there is no color flicker at all. I think that's because, somehow or another, it's keeping the game window in the "Foreground" for the recording, so it doesn't think it's alt-tabbing at all.

So basically, I just need to figure out a way to replicate that without needing to be recording anything!

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello,

Good catch, since when i was looking at the disable full screen optimization and DX12 options, i read the windows Xbox gaming bar also recognize when a game is launched in full screen and/or verified by Microsoft.

Maybe try to disable the Xbox game DVR, not sure it will solve the issue tho.
The only thing i could advice it to try maybe an old driver like a 17.11.x or something like that.
Check if the issue is still there with drivers more than 6mo old.

To be honest i do not know or have enough knowledge to pinpoint precisely what is the cause, monitor, driver, gpu, cable, os?

But definitively there is something with DX12 and the full/windowed mode.

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