PC Drivers & Software

[aidilriski]

I just bought a new ASUS Vivobook S14 M433IA that has Ryzen 4700U and Vega 10 a few days ago. However, from the day I bought it, it already has screen flickers that happen randomly. The flickers happen only for a split of second, however it is kind of annoying. When I changed the driver to the latest AMD Graphic Driver, it actually got worse, with screen flickers happening even more often and sometimes the screen still has garbage leftovers from the previous frames, or for a split of second, half of the screen blinks white. I believe this is a driver issue since the laptop is new and when I changed the driver to the latest, it actually got worse.

Currently I am using the driver provided in this link https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-ryzen-mobile-4000 Though the flickers still happen, just a little bit better than the latest driver.

Does anyone know the fix or is it really a driver issue?

[nz-desertfox]

Hi aidilriski,

I have the same issue. I have an Asus Vivobook S15 which has Ryzen 4700U with Radeon Graphics.

I also believe this is a drivers problem. Removing the drivers also removes the flicker for me but at the cost of poor resolution and no external display. I installed Ubuntu on the laptop and that didn't suffer from flickering but the external display doesn't work.

I am now trying to get it replaced for a laptop which doesn't have AMD graphics, which will likely be an Intel CPU laptop. I am so sad about this because the 4700U is amazing.

[aidilriski]

Yeah, I already tried uninstalling the AMD driver on Windows 10, and ran the laptop using Windows 10 generic display driver, and it ran smooth without any flicker issues, though it lacks the features provided by AMD. Then I decided to use Manjaro Linux instead, using the provided opensource driver, and to this day I have not seen the issues at all. So it definitely is AMD Display driver's fault. So please AMD fix this issue. 

[nz-desertfox]

I am glad it worked out for you. I ended up replacing the laptop for an i7 one (can't afford Ryzen CPU + Nvidia graphics) and I already feel how much weaker the i7 is. Hopefully, AMD fix the issue soon

[kingfish]

Everyone with this issue should report the issue to AMD:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/contact-email-form 

[hardcoregames_]

I have seen this with windows 10 v 2004, it seems to be the WDDM 2.7 attempting a graphics reset which suggests a miniport driver issue.

[rvescovi]

Upgrading the PC to Windows 10 2004 reverts the graphics driver to WD 26.x.x. from a WD 27.x.x. (I replaced also Adrenaline Full with the Windows Store Light version). No flickering anymore since days also with the SVM re-enabled in the bios and WSL1 with UBUNTU too.

[hardcoregames_]

Some of the components in the full driver may be too demanding for a mobile user.

I tend to use a minimal driver install myself but for entirely different reasons

[mashaal95]

So you are using the Windows provided driver, rather than the OEM or AMD driver, correct? Thinking of doing the same now, seeing your results.

[rvescovi]

Yes, these are the driver installed during Windows 10 2004 update which are working perfect also with SVM re-enabled from BIOS

[kxjlib]

I've had the same issue, with the same model of laptop, so it may be an ASUS problem, but i hope that AMD resolves the issue. removing the Display Adapter Driver seems to have fixed it but i am now unable to use OpenGL, which is critical for me, so i may move to Linux

[kxjlib]

This may be a bit late, but disabling SVM in the BIOS fixed this issue for me!

[rvescovi]

Hi, yesterday I received a new ASUS S15 M533 with Ryzen 4700U and it suffers flickering from the beginning when in battery. I raised a call with Asus support and in the meantime I tried your suggestion to disable SVM in BIOS, and IT WORKS, thank you very much! 

[msx]

Disabling SVM stopped the flickering. I was also able to stop flickering with SVM enabled in BIOS by disabling Hyper-V with "bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype off".

I do need Hyper-V to work for WSL2, so I'm sending bug reports as well.

EDIT: I found that disabling IOMMU was sufficient to stop the flickering. I re-enabled Hyper-V with bcdedit /set hypervisorlaunchtype auto then I explicitly disabled IOMMU with bcdedit /set hypervisoriommupolicy off

Of course disabling IOMMU is not ideal, but it is an improvement.

[hardcoregames_]

The IOMMU us used by windows to handle disk IO and other system functions, so disabling it actually hurts performance significantly

A laptop generally is not designed for datacenter class workloads

[rvescovi]

It looks like issues related to parallel memory access from different unmanaged IO driver. AMD released new drivers on 29_09 I will try if this fix something.

[hardcoregames_]

The IOMMU is basically a 64-bit DMA controller

[msx]

My system (Asus PN50) doesn't have a BIOS setting to disable the IOMMU completely. The Windows setting to disable it specifically for Hyper-V seems to be sufficient.

I don't know of the full impact of changing hypervisoriommupolicy though. I expect the impact to virtualization is greater with more complex workloads. For WSL2, it doesn't seem to matter (there is no IO virtualization in WSL2).

[hardcoregames_]

Support for Hyper-V does not affect the system at all. Unless you install the Hyper-V components in Windows.

The flicker problem is entirely the display system and the monitor

Check your refresh rate with the windows settings to see if it is running at the proper rate, sometimes a television does not work properly with a PC which can affect the operation

[hardcoregames_]

Flicker seems to be more of an issue with both AMD and NVIDIA cards so I suspect some fixes for windows will surface soon

[mashaal95]

I have been having the same issue on my Lenovo Legion 5 with an AMD Ryzen 5 4600h chip. As per the suggestions in this thread, disabling virtualization seems to have stopped the flickering, however, I use virtualization to access WSL2 so this is unacceptable for me to keep in the long term. No flickering occurs in the BIOS as well.

Lenovo has already replaced my first unit due to the same issue and am now on my 2nd unit, but I now suspect that this is a recurring theme with all mobile Ryzen chips. There are many threads on Reddit as well that discuss the same issue with the Zephyrus G14 laptops. Curiously, I have not seen many threads with the Dell G15 series of laptops online with the Ryzen mobile 4000 series chips.

I really hope that this is a software issue rather than a hardware issue, I really do love the performance and efficiency of these chips. It really would be a damn shame that such great chips be let down by faulty software.

[msx]

I was able to retain WSL2 functionality and stop flickering by disabling Hyper-V IOMMU only. See my other reply in this thread for the exact command.

[mashaal95]

Will doing this reduce VM performance?

[msx]

It didn’t impact WSL2 performance in any noticeable way for me. That’s the only virtualization I do on my system though.

[hardcoregames_]

The flicker suggests you are overloading the CPU. A laptop is not the ideal platform workstation class tasks.

IOMMU is the DMA, disabling it hurts performance

[msx]

The flicker occurs on an idle desktop in Windows.

To stop flickering IOMMU wasn’t disabled system wide, only the Hyper-V setting. I hope AMD or Microsoft comes out with a fix soon, but for now (for me) it’s better then flickering.

In any event this is a defect and a potential workaround, not a performance tip.

[mashaal95]

I agree with you, it flickers while doing the most mundane tasks like web browsing or just viewing documents.

I hope that it's at least acknowledged by AMD and Microsoft. I have seen threads where this issue does not seem to occur on open source software in Linux distros.

[msx]

I had no flicker in Linux but I wasn’t running any virtualization. I noticed other issues though which is why I installed Windows for now. I’ll try again once Fedora or Ubuntu have stable releases with a Ryzen friendly kernel.

[ranapatr91]

I had the same issue . I tried all driver version but only 20.4.2 works . Try 20.4.2 it should resolve the issue .

[mashaal95]

20.4.2 is incompatible with Ryzen mobile 4000 series processors. If you are speaking of another version which actually is compatible, do let us know in the comments.

[hardcoregames_]

mashaal95 wrote:

20.4.2 is incompatible with Ryzen mobile 4000 series processors. If you are speaking of another version which actually is compatible, do let us know in the comments.

Try 20.9.2 which is the latest driver for Radeon graphics

[mashaal95]

I am currently on the same driver that you've mentioned. It still flickers, unfortunately.

[hardcoregames_]

mashaal95 wrote:

I am currently on the same driver that you've mentioned. It still flickers, unfortunately.

Unfortunately given the mobile 4000 series are fresh it may take a while for the machine to stabilize.

Check to be sure your BIOS is updated regularly too

[mashaal95]

Are you saying that the flickers will resolve itself on their own? If that were the case, it should have gone after the first few days, they show no sign of letting up just yet. 

I am on the latest BIOS available to this laptop.

[hardcoregames_]

My RTX 2080 took 8 months for drivers to stop the TDR errors etc

[mashaal95]

Were your issues with your RTX 2080 something that other users were facing as well?

[hansh]

Disabling SVM in bios stopped the flickering for my system asus PN50.

[Foysal]

I have also same issue.

---

@aidilriski wrote:

I just bought a new ASUS Zenbook 14 UX425IA that has Ryzen 4700U a few days ago. However, from the day I bought it, it already has screen flickers that happen randomly. The flickers happen only for a split of second, however it is kind of annoying. When I changed the driver to the latest AMD Graphic Driver, it actually got worse, with screen flickers happening even more often and sometimes the screen still has garbage leftovers from the previous frames, or for a split of second, half of the screen blinks white. I believe this is a driver issue since the laptop is new and when I changed the driver to the latest, it actually got worse.

Currently I am using the driver provided in this link https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-ryzen-mobile-4000 Though the flickers still happen, just a little bit better than the latest driver.

Does anyone know the fix or is it really a driver issue?

---

[leonliu]

For my ASUS pn50, updating latest BIOS 0611 and Radeon driver 20.11.2 fix screen flicker issue.

[muzezee]

Were you able to fix it?

I have the same issue with display garbage pixels showing.