Widescreen Gaming Forum

Recently I have had big issues with the 11.x drivers causing my non-primary display screens to flicker on the windows desktop a lot but never in game.
The flickering was often triggered by some sort of 2D animation, this could be as simple as scrolling down a webpage.

Using driver sweeper while in windows safe mode, I removed all the ATI drivers, rebooted and installed ati driver v10.6.
With driver 10.6 my screens no longer flickered on the windows desktop, even with overdrive enabled.
I noticed that the 2D clocks where at GPU=400MHz and Mem=1200MHz.

I decided to try and upgrade the drivers back to v11.6 again, using driver sweeper in windows safe mode to clear all of 10.6 series drivers.

Once the 11.6 drivers where instaled, I went back into ATI Overdrive and noticed that the 2D clocks where GPU=157MHz and mem=300MHz.

With Overdrive enabled on the newer drivers, my 3D clock settings would increase, but the 2D clocks would drop massively, causing my screens to flicker when in the windows desktop.

Here is some GPU-Z images for reference...

Image1: No drivers installed, no overdrive.


Image2: 10.6 drivers installed, overdrive enabled.


Image3: 11.6 drivers installed, overdrive enabled.


When using drivers 11.6 and ATI Overdrive was disabled, the 2D clocks would increase back up to the same as that of the 10.6 drivers@ 400/1200mhz.

Unfortunately the ATI drivers do not allow you to adjust the 2D clocks, even with overdrive enabled, so the way to fix this issue was to edit the profiles.xml file located in C:UsersAppDataLocalATIACEprofiles.xml

Open the file in a texteditor and search for the following lines...

These values are the 2D clock speeds and voltages that are used when Overdrive is enabled.
We need to increase these values to get rid of the flickering caused by these low speeds.

Change the values to the following...

Save the profiles.xml file and set it as read only.
Reboot your pc.
Now when using ATI Overdrive you can still achieve the higher 3D clock speeds and maintain a stable desktop with more reliable 2D clocks, using GPU=400MHz and Mem=600MHz, I had also increased the VDDC voltage from 0.950- to 1.063.

Here is the 11.6 drivers with ati overdrive enabled after the fix detailed above.


Some of you may also notice the difference in amps the card draws when changing the clock settings.
With the 2D clocks at 400/600mhz, the card appears to draw only 4.4amps, compared to 12.5amps when ati overdrive is disabled running at 400/1200mhz.

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

On my XFX5870 the DP(main) was fine, it was the 2x side DVI(one is VGA) that were flickering everytime i clicked on another screen, rightclicking, loading videos, switching apps, etc.

You're setup didn't work until i changed the MEM to:



I figured out it was the MEM Clock switching that was doing it(i have a GPU meter in my Windows Gadget) so by putting the same clock on the 2 Low profiles it never switch when i'm doing windows stuff.

And i also had to disable Flash Hardware acceleration.

Now i'm hoping that ATI comes with something like Default 2D Clock and 3D Clock(activated only when i game and stay active even if i alt-tab) instead of this 3 auto profile shit...

Thank you so much for posting this!

I had been looking into a different solution which involved flashing of the BIOS for both my cards using atiflash and Radeon BIOS editor. Wasn't really looking forward to trying that but then I came across this post and it worked flawlessly.

I too had flickering on my two side screens, mainly in the taskbar. This totally solved the problem so again, THANK YOU!!

-Ian

Thanks for posting this but i can't get this to work on my 5850's.
Regardless of what i enter into the xml file the settings remain the same and the flickering stays. My card is going from 725mhz stock to 157mhz in 2d mode when im overclocked, is that too much of a drop?. Its also undervolting slightly. Without overclocking it goes to 400mhz in 2d mode, but i still seem to get flickering now and then, or my 2nd monitor keeps turning off and on repeatidly. I think its caused by the undervolting. When i set it to those clocks myself in 3d mode its fine, But while in 3d mode my voltage goes higher so is that causing it to not screw up? I can't manually set my voltages for 2d mode it seems.

Is the only way to fix this with a bios flash? Or is it worth just using the older drivers?

Thanks for posting this but i can't get this to work on my 5850's.
Regardless of what i enter into the xml file the settings remain the same and the flickering stays. My card is going from 725mhz stock to 157mhz in 2d mode when im overclocked, is that too much of a drop?. Its also undervolting slightly. Without overclocking it goes to 400mhz in 2d mode, but i still seem to get flickering now and then, or my 2nd monitor keeps turning off and on repeatidly. I think its caused by the undervolting. When i set it to those clocks myself in 3d mode its fine, But while in 3d mode my voltage goes higher so is that causing it to not screw up? I can't manually set my voltages for 2d mode it seems.

Is the only way to fix this with a bios flash? Or is it worth just using the older drivers?

Try editing the XML file, including the voltage value, save the file and set it to read only, then reboot your pc. Does this work for you?

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| Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi Skt2011 | i7 4820k @4.4GHz Watercooled (Ivy Bridge-E) | Corsair Vengence 32GB @2133MHz 11-11-11-27 2T Quad-Channel (8x4GB) | AMD R9-Fury-X 4GB @1140/505MHz + EKWB Watercooled | 256GB Crucial MX200 SSD | 8x 1TB Samsung F3 SATA-II | Corsair 850W TX PSU | 3x Dell S2209W 22"wide TFT's (5760x1080res) | Logitech Z-5400 5.1ch speakers | Win7 Ultimate x64 |

I've tried that, It acts kind of odd. in 3d mode it goes to 1.088v. in 2d mode it goes to 0.95 where the flickering starts. If i try set it to 1.088 in 2d mode via the xml, it just goes to 1v but then it still flickers.
Edit: now its not doing it at 1v, seems fairly odd when it wants to flicker

I have a 5970 and have this:



























































Now I changed the values for coreclock to 40000 for both gpu, saved the file and put it in read only, and absolutely do not understand why after reboot the values are back to 15700 - ?????

Flickering on the DP screen just by ticking the 'Enable AMD overdrive' - Even without increasing the gpu clock setting.

Any advise on next step besides going back to 10.3 ?

Hi,

I wish you are doing fine. I have the similar problem and my screen flickers specially on gray backgrounds and in games I can see these flickers clearly. (the flickers are recently visible in white backgrounds too.)
I am not quite sure what the problem is. (I mean whether it is from graphic card, my Samsung LED SA300, my PSU or ...)
I have bought my computer about a week ago and I had this problem from the very first day. My cpu is core i7 950 and my graphic card is radeon hd6450. I really don't know much about overclocking and these kind of stuff I just need this problem to vanish :( please tell me what to do. headache due to these flickers is killing me :(
I send you some pictures from techpowerup cpu-z so that they might help solving my problem.

Thank you so much

Attached files

If you have Flicker WHILE gaming its not a problem of 2D Clocks (so you re in the wrong thread here) you have either a Problem with your GPU, Monitors or Cables! Try another Monitor with Another cable! If still exists. RMA GPU!

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We gonna send it to outa space!

I've been having similiar issues since the update, I get screen flickering on both my screens when I activate my Overdrive mode and raise the values above what is default.

I tried your fix but it seemed to of only fixed my primary monitor, which is a Samsung SyncMaster B2230 widescreen HDMI, and my 2nd monitor is an old-ish VGA 21" LCD

This doesn't occur in games, mind you, but it is worrying.

I can post my default values of my profile you mentioned to modify to fix this, because I can't see what else would be wrong with it/causing it.



Any help is appreciated!