PC Graphics

[abue919]

Anyone else with the 6900 XT series having issues with screen flickering when running a game and alt tabbing? I can recreate it everytime  I open a windows context menu, my 2nd screen running at 1080p will randomly flicker, some older games running directx 11 (in this case Subnautica) will cause a driver crash sometimes while triggering the flickering.

I upgraded from my 390x which does not have any of these issues with the same exact setup.

Main screen is an Acer XG270HU on Display port running at 2k @ 120 fps capped, if I set it to 144hz it will cause screen flickering on the 2nd screen alot more even without a game loaded but works fine capped at 120.

2nd screen is an HP Pavilion 27 vw 1080p 60hz  HDMI

I don't know if this is really a driver issue or some sort of issue with backwards compatibility with HDMI and DP tech. 

Again, my 390x does not have any of these symptoms and  was a rock solid GPU for about 7 years. I've scoured the internet for solutions and nothing seems to be working, I've already RMA'ed the card once, the initial card had actual flickering + artificing and it would constantly crash the system so I was pretty sure that one was a dud, but this one as long as I'm not tabbing alot with certain games seems to run fine, the flickering/occasional driver crashes are the problem.  Given the cost of the card I'm very worried about it, I'm not even sure if I can get a refund or not or what AMD's policy is but it is unnerving to have paid $1200 for a GPU that's supposed to be a premium card and is causing crashes and annoyances.

Does anyone have similar issues or a solution to this? Maybe custom resolutions in the software?

[CaligoVereor]

There is currently a known flickering issue that happens with newest drivers:

• Display may flicker black during video playback plus gameplay on some AMD Graphics Products such as the Radeon™ RX 6700 XT

Seems like that's being caused by having 2 monitors with different refreshrates, but for us that's mostly happening when scrolling browser pages. For example opening a YouTube video and scrolling down, the moment the video leaves the screen it flickers back, the same happens when a video goes on screen. And it also seems to be happening on main screen (with highest refreshrate), not on the secondary one like in your case.

That being said, it could still be related to your problem. To find out whether it is try installing an older driver, for me and many others 22.2.1 is the latest one that does not have the flickering issues, so try that one. If you don't feel like messing around with drivers you can also test by setting both displays to the same refreshrate and see if that helps, that might also fix it (although I personally have not tried it since I've made peace with sitting on older drivers until issue moves from known to fixed in release notes).

[hrpuffnstuff]

I have a 6900 xt and my 2nd monitor has been doing that since the day I installed it and has continued with each adrenaline update.  At one point it was happening to my primary monitor even while in game but my then dying 5950x might have played a role in that.  I run two 144hz nano IPS ultrawide monitors, LG 38GL950 and BenQ Mobiuz EX3415R, and everything else is great except for the 2nd screen blinking out at random. 

I have quality cable matters 8k dp cables so its not a cable issue and when I attach my laptop with rtx 3060 it doesn't happen nor does it happen with my work laptop that is running an AMD ryzen 5 pro 4650u.

Considering how much these gpu's cost it would be nice if the driver team could fix this for us.  If it weren't for the tech shortage early last year I wouldn't have this problem and a rtx family card would be there instead.

[abue919]

Thanks for confirming you're having those issues too, it's 100% driver related, I can do the same settings on the 390x and I have no issues whatsoever, one secreen at 120 or 144hz and the other one at its cap at 60.

The flickering only occurs if I alt tab from games, I can recreate it succesfully now everytime with Subnautica. Open the game, stay in main menu, alt tab and start dragging your cursor around the desktop, this causes the 2nd screen to flicker constantly but also eventually crashed the video driver, I even set the main screen to 60hz to match the 2nd monitor and it still crashed even though the 2nd monitor was barely flickering when both matched 60 hz, something is definitely off with the interaction of direct3d and the windows aero desktop stuff. I tried disabling all windows animations and whatnot but it still happens, so the problem runs much deeper.

[abue919]

I may have found a potential temporary solution. After scouring forums for weeks, I saw a post earlier that by setting minimum GPU frequency to around 2000 stops the flickering, seems like the GPU downclocks every time you alt tab or do something on windows which may be the reason it's causing discrepancies between screens and crashing the driver. Now that I did this I can't seem to recreate the Subnautica  gpu driver crash + 2nd monitor flickers with Subnautica running or any other game for that matter. The cursor dragging on the desktop still lags a bit but doesn't seem to affect anything else, I'll keep testing as well but you guys should try it and see if it gives results.

edit: I take it back, it still flickers

Cheers!

[Jam140186]

Do you have smart access memory enabled? I had to reset my bios and turned SAM off which is when the issue started for me.

[Axton]

I randomly get a flickering desktop right at boot up, Windows 10, Adrenalin 23.4.3 but it's happened on older drivers too.  I'm getting it right now in fact, that's why I came here.  I even submitted a bug report from the driver (like that ever helps anyway).  edit: single screen only, 60hz.

If i reboot it usually goes away.  It's probably some random bug with my hardware, it's done other things too that I had to work around.  I even use the regedit trick for flickering but it obviously doesn't work for me.

[abue919]

I ended up returning my 6950xt last year,  and got a refund. got a 4090 eventually 5 months later lol.
I did end up finding a workaround, not ideal but it worked. Do you have multi screen setups? or is it  a single screen that is flickering?

My workaround was to basically switch the screen that was flickering to either virtual super resolution and display it at much higher res that it is supposed to or lower it from native to something like 1600x900 or something along those lines. As long as the screen wasn't on native res it worked for me.

[Axton]

No I only have one screen, using a DP cable, only 60Hz though.  It's a reference 6950 I bought on amd.com, still has a year left on warranty, but with how flaky the amd site is I dont even know if I can login to it anymore.

my old 1080ti did 2 screens no problem, I haven't even tried it yet on this AMD gpu, kind of scared to try!

[abue919]

hmm, that is very strange, i didn't have the issue with a single screen, it was only a problem with my 2nd screen hooked up which is a deal breaker for me lol. You can try the fix with your primary screen as well and see if it works. The problem you are describing is very similar to what i used to have with my 390x on my old setup, but that particular problem I could never corner down, it seemed  like my mobo simply did not like that card for some reason. For the most part it used to work okay until windows would start cracking up randomly and I'd have to hard reset everything every now and then.  Once I upgraded my cpu/mobo to AM4, problems went away (this was with an old FX8350 cpu and a ASrock mobo back then).   

Does your screen lag if you hold your mouse cursor down and drag it around the desktop?