PC Drivers & Software

[cubano_2]

 Recently updated to drivers 20.8.2 for the support of MFS2020 and after a fresh install wiping my system clean with DDU there is this weird flicker that happens every two or five seconds when I have the refresh rate set at anything other than 60hz, tried two monitors and its the same problem , tried display port or HDMI and it has the same issue. Card is a rx 5700xt from xfx, going back to 20.4 or 20.5 drivers fixes the issue so its a driver problem for sure. The monitor is a Viotek and the other monitor i tested is a Samsung, when i have both monitors on even though the main monitor is set at 144hz and the other at 60 they both flicker at the same time.

[fyrel]

There is a known issue with freesync.

Try turning it off on your monitors if you have it enabled.

With Radeon FreeSync enabled on Radeon RX 5000 series system configurations, task switching to another display or application may cause the display to flicker for a few moments.

[tool]

Same issue here on a Gigabyte 5700XT Gaming OC. Ran DDU, did a fresh install, and instantly noticed the intermittent flickering. My second monitor (60hz) is  hooked up via HDMI, my main monitor (144hz) is hooked up via display port. As the OP said, the flickering seems to only be present when my main monitor's  refresh rate is set to anything higher than 60.

*edit* freesync is disabled, the issue persists.

These driver issues lately are killing me. Can't quite remember anything like it in my ~17 years of using AMD products.

[cubano_2]

Disabled freesync and disabled in both the monitor and the Adrenaline and the issue is still there, i did a install of the new drivers on top of the current 20.4.2 stable driver without a restart and it looked like the flickering went away, still at 144 hz , I restarted the computer and the flickering came back. Until this driver is a stable version I'm going back to 20.4.2. AMD should just pay NVidia to make the drivers for them lol.

[Anonymous]

Firstly check the displayport standard of your monitor and ensure its displayport 1.3 or 1.4. Ensure you are using a displayport 1.4 cable. Check the resolution you have the display set to and try lowering it. If you have an ultra widescreen also known as a "gaming monitor" which often can game at whats advertised as 1080p 144hz as is commonly popular or supported by displays and most GPU's you must set the monitor to 720p height resolution as the screen has the same cables and bandwidth as normal display but the vertical height of the image and sharpness/picture quality is halved. For example 4k on a normal display 16:9 is 3840x2160 but for widescreen its 3440x1440. 1440p is one resolution tier lower than 4k usually in terms of common resolutions. So if you want to game in 1080p on a garbage "gaming" or "ultrawide" monitor you must set it to a resolution tier lower. Enable HDMI link assurance in adrenaline display settings and adjust the hz refresh rate of your monitor till you reach your panels native refresh rate, you will know when you find it as in the AMD adrenaline display settings you can adjust "hdmi scaling". My Samsung TV from 2017-2018 is a 4k120hz display so I can set my freesync enabled in all 3 places my TV's menu from using the TV remote control under "external devices>Game mode ON > freesync ultimate then, adrenaline software display settings and adrenaline added game/app profile options. If you are using image sharpening or overlays of any sort try disabling them.

Secondly try enabling enhanced sync or vsync. If thats not fixing it try disabling them. If you have freesync enabled by pressing the physical menu buttons on you rmonitor and enabling it in your monitors settings menu and in your adrenaline drivers and you've added the application or game you are using to the adrenaline gaming menu and edited its profile to force freesync on but maybe its a "movie player app" like netflix or its a web browser like chrome and its still flickering then try forcing freesync to off in all 3 settings in the adrenaline game/app profile and the adrenaline display settings and the monitors physical remote control or push button menu settings.  With freesync disabled though you may not be able to achieve 144hz and be probably stuck with 120hz or something. Often the flickering problem maybe only occurs with video playback when you are trying to play back a 24hz video stream at 120hz and vsync isnt enabled to buffer it or it may be that you have enabled your XMP profile in your RAM wrong, try resetting bios to defaults and see if any problems still occur a good way to test is to do SFC /scannow if it finds errors it may be your memory or bios or overclocking is faulty the games may run fine seemingly but data becomes corrupted. Try not to use overclocking software like afterburner or wattman. Enabling XMP profile for memory in any computer is an overclock and voids warranty so if you have trouble running your computer with anything above DDR4 2133 its an OC as per DDR 4 standard specifications when it was created in the 90's.. So trying to get extreme mhz higher overclocks on your RAM its no wonder you have issues.

[tool]

Still an issue for me with 20.8.3

Sigh. Back to the WHQL driver I go.

[Anonymous]

You will notice that resolutions above 60hz often require freesync to be enabled. If you disable freesync you maybe cant get that refresh rate. the flickering maybe wont occur. The thing is these resolutions are only supported in full screen exclusive mode with software made intended to be used with freesync. If you play back a movie file it requires Vsync be enabled as you will be changing the 24fps to 120fps and the coversion isnt an even division. So there will be a sort of stuttering or skipping often is the case in which Vsyncs or enhanced syncs frame buffer can make the stutter or flickering no longer be an issue. If you disable freesync the stutter or flicker may also be gone. The video player software is usually not meant to play back with freesync mode but is meant to play back with normal output and Vsync mode enabled. A classic example of this is the windows 10 app stores netflix app.

Lots of the times in your adrenaline game settings profile you force freesync on for use with an app it maybe fixes it. But often forcing freesync in games and software that poorly coded and have high latency or buffering issues or maybe require enhanced sync or Vsync be enabled may cause issues when ALT TABBING or QUITTING the application or game as the display changes the freesync and hz refresh rate back from full screen exclusive mode and higher freesync hz refresh like 144hz to the regular desktop output or to a different resolution and refresh rate. You should also be ensuring that your monitor or TV's hardware has been using the remote control for the TV or pressing physical buttons on side of monitor to go into menu and find the "game mode" section and enabling or disabling freesync in there and try again.

[tool]

I appreciate the reply, but this is an issue that is only present in newer driver versions. The latest WHQL driver contains no such issue with the same exact settings and setup. Also, this flickering or "blinking" issue happens even with no apps/programs running. The desktop background is just constantly blinking every few seconds.

[tool]

OP did you ever find a solution? It's STILL an issue for me with driver version 20.8.3.

[Anonymous]

The solution for my PC to get rid of monitor flicker is to

1) ensure freesync is correctly enabled in all 3 or 4 places it must be enabled for it to work

2) go to AMD adrenaline software and in global graphics settings DISABLE EVERYTHING then scroll down and see the advanced section leave AA to defaults then set texture quality to HIGH and set TESSELLATION to OVERRIDE OFF

leave EVERYTHING disabled in the global graphics settings and options wherever possible.

3) set Vsync to OFF in all your games and apps as you will be using freesync but some apps may have a wobble when rapidly mouselooking around so for those titles enable Vsync in the settings or consider in its adrenaline software individual game profile enabling enhanced sync or traditional vsync. Video playback for apps like netflix often must be added to the adrenaline profile and Vsync enabled in some cases.

4)click start>settings>system>display then ensure your resolution is set correctly for your display almost every graphics card and monitor can do 1080p nowadays so you could start with that. but for 120hz you usually are only able to achieve this with freesync and set to 1440p (with ultrawide monitors the 1440p resolution is actually supposed to be 1080p and 1080p is the 720p height res as its about half the height values but a touch wider to try to squeeze out several more hz often you will see a monitor that can acheive 4k resolution be marketed as 144hz but it CANNOT DO 4k 144hz EVER the cables and bandwidth dont exist for it.. and its an ULTRA WIDE monitor so its actually needs to be set to xxx by 720 with freesync enabled then can be set to 144hz without issue and perform as advertised it also maybe cant acheive high refresh rates at 1080 or 1440 height resolutions is often the case)

Once you've set your resolution correctly for your display you will want to scroll down and click on "ADVANCED DISPLAY SETTINGS" and view the "DESKTOP resolution" and the "ACTIVE RESOLUTION" ensure they are both the same identical and the one you wanted it to be set to or your system will perform VERY poorly if you've tried to set your desktop to 1080p but your GPU is running 4k anyway. Then you go to the adaptor properties for your display and select the HZ refresh rate available as desired. Then go back to the display menu and under the advanced display settings the words "GRAPHICS SETTINGS" should be visible, enter there and click up the top link for "CHANGE DEFAULT GRAPHICS SETTINGS" you can then enable VRR and enable GPU hardware scheduling if your drivers and GPU allow for it. Following that go to your displays menu by pressing the physical buttons or remote control and ensure the black levels are set correctly and ensure UHD colour inputs are enabled and present and you have HDCP2.2 devices in the display and GPU setup on both ends or try disabling HDCP content protection in the display overrides in adrenaline but this may prevent netflix or 4k blurays or other protected content from playing back. Lastly ensure that you have set to limited RGB or FULL RGB or YCBCR 420 or full 444 only use full RGB or 444 if your display allows for it. You must also check you have DP 1.4 or HDMI 2.1 cables so bandwidth of the cables arent an issue.

5) attempt running games or apps in exclusive fullscreen mode or borderless window mode as it may fix the issue as some apps strangely try to use their own vsync buffering because they think they know better than microsoft and graphics cards makers which may cause issues on exit or when alt tabbing.

[tool]

This issue was resolved for me with today's 20.9.2 update.

As per the release notes:

Fixed: Screen flickering may be observed while MSI Afterburner™ is running or enabled on the system.

[Anonymous]

yeah lots of people dont know AMD adrenaline software lets them do all the overclocking stuff.. and they needlessly install poorly made overly hyped and heavily advertised and marketed thirdparty bloatware crashware and have a system wide system instability party.

[tool]

Different strokes for different folks. /shrug

Anyway, good luck to anyone who had this issue, hope it was fixed for you all as well.