Black screen flicker

[Stormy Fairweather]

So, windows 7, radeon 5450 1gB vram, 1 22" widescreen LCD, 1 14" 4:3 lcd monitor.

Problem is that often in a full screen game the game will essentially 'flicker' black for a tenth of a second or so. The game I am currently trying to play is Oddworld Abe's Oddyssey from the Oddworld Oddbox. The interesting thing I found is that I only get this bahavior on the widescreen monitor, the 4:3 does not appear to share it (although it is possible my testing was not thorough enough)

I have done quite a bit of searching around, and have found a few people that share this problem, but each case I found was either unsolved or resolved by stopping/uninstalling a program that leaves an icon on the taskbar (like xfire), on my computer the only taskbar items I have are systems ones (networking, sound, usb, etc) and they are set to never give me notifications of pop ups.

Once again, here I am seeking wisdom, and offering cookies for it.

[liljim]

mmmm cookies....

couple of things to look at, temperature can cause some flickering, bad/old drivers, bad cable. When you go to the 4:3 are you using the same cable?

also need to look at resolutions and refresh rate vs what each monitor is capable of running. that may well have alot to do with it if the problem is only on one monitor. All in all you may just need to find a resolution and refresh rate that matches that monitor. Cards can typically produce way more then most monitors are take in.

[Stormy Fairweather]

Well, the monitor in question likes 1680x1024, 59-60 hrtz. (I seem to recall reading something about the actual frequency being something between those)

Another thing experimentinf with simple 2d games has brought to focus is that even with an even 60 FPS, it often looks like it has 'mini-stutters' that are more than a little annoying.

I have seen these ministutters in several other games (3d too) and in some cases even causesd headaches (torchlight).

Anyway, one cookie for participation.

Edit - After trying new/different drivers, I have managed to get even worse behavior. Running Gish (total program size is 100mB) my framerate says 61-62 (which seems odd as it should be 60) which seems to cause horrific stuttering. The game looks like it is running at 30-40 fps, being quite choppy and stuttery. Beyond unplayable actually. Without v-sync each and every single program I run (even movies) tears so bad it is unusable. Side note, anyone know which version of Catalyst is actually best for a radeon 5450? The newer drivers seem to be far worse for it than the older ones, but I am not sure about the 'sweet spot' for it.

As for the black screen flicker, it continues, but unlike the microstutter, it is uncommon and not intolerable.

[liljim]

What connection are you using? VGA, DVI, HDMI? same cable as other monitor with no probs?

Any of the 5X series drivers should run fine, one of my machines is using that series card with the newest driver and it trouble free.

Check to see if you can raise the refresh rate to around 75 hertz, if the monitor will allow it at that resolution it should help.

[Stormy Fairweather]

My monitor will only allow for 60 hrtz refresh. As for the connection, I am using DVI on the LCD with the microstutter. I was using VGA before on it during the time I had to use onboard video, and the microstutter existed in addition to other problems.

It seems to be the worst in any isometric view, Torchlight, Sacred 2, Diablo II (yes, even this stutters)

[liljim]

So it flickered on onboard video, video card, vga, dvi....

thats quite odd man. Im about out of suggestions here, maybe one is to look for a monitor driver if your using a pnp one. I woulda thought it would get to at least 70 HTz, have you tried to back off the resolution a bit just to see if it helps? Just to test id drop the res a notch and that should allow the refresh to be increased a notch.

[Stormy Fairweather]

The flicker isnot really the major concern, as it is pretty intermitant, if annoying. It is the micro stutter I am trying to address (that and overall performance issues). As for resolution/refresh, 1024x768 and lower will allow for refresh rates up to 75 hrtz, anything above that can only do 60 (seems kinda funny that 50 hrtz is an option for the lower res, but not available for the higher ones)

Thanks for the feedback, I started a thread over at tom's hardware on this too, and tghat post contains alot more information about the system and history of problems.

[liljim]

Try making a run through pcpitstop.com, click on overdrive, scroll down to bottom and click run OverDrive anonymously. You need to be using IE when you go, it doesnt like firefox very much. Those test will look at each piece of hardware separately and give results accordingly. Might help find the bottleneck.