AMD issue / Flickering using multi 1440p monitors and drivers 15.7 and up

[IEC]

the problem is nvidia has their own issues with multi monitor; and sli just isn't has fast as crossfire when they are both working.

as I said I'm wondering if its not a driver issue but controller issue with the monitors; is there any new flashes for the monitors?

I would not rule it out. I had a flickering issue with a BenQ monitor + Radeon 290 CFX and it turned out to be monitor firmware (thankfully, I had other monitors to isolation test with). It was a specific subset of firmwares/production dates for that particular monitor too, so plenty of people told me it must be drivers or cables, etc.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Guys, keep in mind I never had issues with my monitors since 2011 - 2012. In 2013 with the R9 290x, after running flawlessly for 3 years with Trifire 6970 and Quad HD 7970, I had to sell one monitor for a Display port native one because I had issue with Dp to DVi usb powered dongles. Took me months to diagnose and this setup I have actualy worked for 2 years and now all of a sudden, all Windows 10 drivers, meaning 15.7 and up don't work anymore. It is clearly driver issue.

Check back in the begginning of the threads for an history of my monitors

My monitors were like this in 2011 (Tri 6970 and Quad 7970)
1st: CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI
2nd: CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI to DP adapter
3rd:CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI to DP adapter

In 2013 Quad R9 290x
1st: CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI
2nd: CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI
3rd:CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI to DP adapter

In 2014 they broke something in drivers for so long and had to sell and buy another monitor (same setup)
1st: CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI
2nd:CrossOvers 27Q Led-P DVI
3rd: Samsung U28D590 (4k) native Display Port



I'm using the bolded set-up.

I have my workaround right now for 2d mode. No issie anymore except my first card is always at 300/1250 instead of 300/150.
And with 3d games, I have to unplug and replug the DP monitors and it comes back to normal.

All the issue I had witb AMD for the past 4 years were all drivers related even after blaming every part of my setup , it always ended up being AMD drivers.

They are notorious for breaking the drivers and all of you know.

I have said it, screw you AMD.

 

[IEC]

Sorry for your experiences KaRLiToS, and I can definitely relate to the frustration. I have had issues with both nV and AMD related to multi-card + multi-monitor configurations.

I hope that once we move beyond AFR to DX12-based multi-card setups we can leave a lot of the Crossfire (and SLI) issues behind us, especially those of us with multi-monitor setups.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Sorry for your experiences KaRLiToS, and I can definitely relate to the frustration. I have had issues with both nV and AMD related to multi-card + multi-monitor configurations.

I hope that once we move beyond AFR to DX12-based multi-card setups we can leave a lot of the Crossfire (and SLI) issues behind us, especially those of us with multi-monitor setups.

You are right.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Just bought a new display port cable 1.2 to test. It is currently in testing, will update this post if I get the bug with 2d or 3d clocks.

EDIT:
Flickers are still present in 2d will try 3d now.

 

[Seba]

Nice way to show the new cable.

 

[railven]

Man, you have way more patients than me. Probably because you invested so much. Moment AMD broke Zero Core with their frame pacing driver update, I called it quits. Than when I swapped to the competitor moment their mGPU option wasn't the cat's meow people claimed it was, I too dropped it.


Have you been able to try a third 1440p monitor (I know, spending more money right now is probably not the ideal solution), just curious if the middle monitor being a different resolution is causing any issues. Have you tried changing the order of which monitor is which?

Good luck!

 

[KaRLiToS]

Man, you have way more patients than me. Probably because you invested so much. Moment AMD broke Zero Core with their frame pacing driver update, I called it quits. Than when I swapped to the competitor moment their mGPU option wasn't the cat's meow people claimed it was, I too dropped it.


Have you been able to try a third 1440p monitor (I know, spending more money right now is probably not the ideal solution), just curious if the middle monitor being a different resolution is causing any issues. Have you tried changing the order of which monitor is which?

Good luck!

The middle monitor is set at 1440p and it causes issue. Watch this, it is when the middle is extended at 4k it doesnt flicker.

Without Eyefinity

Eyefinity Enabled

 

[railven]

The middle monitor is set at 1440p and it causes issue. Watch this, it is when the middle is extended at 4k it doesnt flicker.

<snip>

I know, that's why I asked if you've been able to try a third monitor, native 1440p, not downscaled from 4K. Since it worked fine before with 15.6, I would imagine the root cause might be with that step of downscaling. Perhaps it is affecting the refresh rate or power states? (Just guessing here).

 

[amenx]

Good luck with that. But as you have recognized, you do have quite a niche problem (4k + 1440p x 2). Any company (whether AMD or Nvidia) must prioritize their support for the most widespread issues affecting the most people at any one time. And due to the nature of the business I would guess issues like yours would be far down the list of things requiring urgent attention.

Sorry if I missed something, but did you say that its affecting you with newer drivers and Win 10? Same on Win 8 and 7?

 

[KaRLiToS]

Yes.

I am at 7680*1440 by the way, the resolution I have been running for 4 years now.

 

[RussianSensation]

Yes.

I am at 7680*1440 by the way, the resolution I have been running for 4 years now.

You didn't have these issues when you ran 3 identical QNIX 1440P monitors? Right now you are running 3x1440P but one of those monitors is not identical since it's running outside of its native 4K resolution @ 1440p, right?

Since under your scenario, there is a new variable: 2x1440P native + 1x4K @ 1440P, it may not be the same for the graphics card as being physically connected to 3x1440p native monitors. It's possible there could be some EDID issues.

"EDID Issues
Display devices can have various levels of EDID implementation and, in some cases, they may lack EDID information altogether. Such inconsistencies can cause operational issues ranging from overscan and resolution problems, to the display device not displaying the source content at all."

I am not defending AMD in any way here but your setup is definitely more on the niche side since you are running games with the middle monitor outside its native rez. Maybe that part doesn't even matter as much as having a 3rd non-identical monitor? Having said that if running 3 identical or even 3 different native 1440p monitors also causes the same issues as you described, well that would be MUCH worse.

I am not even sure what options to suggest.

 

[KaRLiToS]

You guys fail to understand that the current setup I have right now worked for the past 1.5 years + and now out of sudden, as many users reported, since 15.6, it flickers.

And when I had my 3 x CrossOver Led-P, I had an issue after a driver release with one of the monitors plugged via Display Port using an DP to DVI USB powered adapter.

The issue is here: Mars 2014 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xvPl12b5Iw
I had to change the monitor to fix that here : http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=36256240&postcount=549

It was working fine with Quad 7970 : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYKgB81dyV8

And now again they break drivers, you guys just don't know how AMD sucks with their drivers and I'm starting to get tired that I have to repeat over and over what is already written in this thread. especially in the OP where I linked around 5-6 threads on other forums where people get the same issues since 15.6

I haven't open this thread to get any solutions because the solution is to fix the drivers, like I previously said, AMD are notorious in breakin drivers. I openned this thread to draw attention on the issue.

AMD sucks, that's all. No I'm not going to buy new monitors this time around.

Since you guys are unable to read the OP and the links I gave, let me paste some of the users getting the issue, users that don't have the same setup as mine.


By the way this user have 3 x Dell U2412M they are 1920x1200 monitors and have DVI, HDMI and Display Port inputs, they are identical monitors and the user gets the issue since 15.6

I got Sapphire R9 290x, three screens (Dell U2412M), two of them connected via DVI, one via Displayport.
Now everything was ok, when on Windows 7, running AMD-Catalyst-15.6-Beta-Software-Suite-Win7-64Bit-June22 drivers.
Using newer drivers on Win 7 (15.7 or 15.7.1), or migrating to Windows 10 (any drivers) causes the problems. The problems appears after a while in 2D mode (desktop), or sometimes when exiting 3D application to 2D and also when the computer wakes up.
The problems includes horizontal flickering and image tearing, very annoying, across all the screens. It seems that when moving the mouse or a window, the flickering is much more frequent. Whenever the display adapter is restarted, the problem disappears for a while. Fullscreen application does not seem the be affected by the flickering, but I have discovered that some of them (even benchmarks) might cause the computer to hard lock (hard reset required).
Temperatures are nominal, changing the core or memory frequencies does not affect it at all.

I have the exact same issue.
Asus R290X, dual screens (Dell U2713H) connected with DVI and Displayport. Resolution 2560x1440 on both screens.
Has worked without a hitch since Asus 290x was new last summer with all driver versions on Windows 8 and 8.1 x64 up until I installed Catalyst 15.7. I then experienced the exact same flickering and tearing making it practically impossible to use my PC. I quickly downgraded to the latest working version I had used, which was Omega 14.12 and everything was fine again.

Note long ago I upgraded to Windows 10 and noticed that the flickering and tearing reappeared. I had not updated any drivers my self since upgrading to Windows 10, so I guess it was the same Omega 14.12 drivers which was still in use(?).

Anyhow, I installed Catalyst 15.7.1 for windows 10 64bit, but to no avail. Still the same flickering and tearing when using two screens. Whats interesting is that if I turn of one monitor, the flickering stops and everything is ok again. I am also able to use two monitors in 2d/desktop, but once my BOINC screensaver kicks in the screens starts flickering and I have to turn of one of the monitors, which "fixes" the flickering and tearing.

My conclusion is that the 15.7 drivers and a possible alignment with the new windows version do not play nice with certain cards. It looks to me like R290 and R290X are the ones affected.

Yep, me too. I am using a 290 with a multiple monitor set up and I get random flickering across the monitors, increased by mouse movement. I am using the latest drivers. This is occurring in desktop usage, not seen it while playing games. This is a clean install of windows 10 (well.... full refresh after upgrade). Saw this during the insider phase of Windows 10 as well, but excepted it as part of the whole Beta experience.

I'm convinced its a driver issue. I just disable the card and then re-enable it in device manager and all is fixed. Luckily I have a monitor attached to the on-board intel graphics output that doesn't turn off when disabling the 290 or re-enabling would be a challenge

I must agree. I am also convinced it is a driver issue and one that is specifically tied to display port.
As I mention in my initial post, everything was ok for me on Windows 7 with 15.6-Beta drivers (I even tried to revert back to confirm that).

Now I have made some tests and I can confirm, that so far - whenever I use 2xDVI + 1 HDMI combination, instead of 2xDVI + DP or DVI + DP, the problems seem to be gone. This is sadly not a solution for higher resolutions, but since I am on 1920x1200, I can at least live with that for the moment. Still, it does not solve the problem that DP is somehow causing the problems. And yes, I tried a different DP cable (newly unpacked), so unless it is the devilish 19pin DP vs 20pin DP issue, I think it is not a problem within the cable itself.

I'm having the same problem with r295x .. its weird because it only happens when i have 3 monitors up.. but when i unplug the 2 additional monitors thats connected to the mini dp.. with a single monitor.. everything seems to work fine. i dont think the problem is the mini dp to DVI because it works fine when i was on windows 8.1. This just started happening in windows 10

Same problem here, drivers 15.7.1 or all windows 10 WU drivers cause that filickering wen the DP is connected on triple screen eyefinity

please fix it , it's a drivers issue because i have no problem with the 15.5 beta

i tried a win 10 clean install, and same problem, 15.5 no flickering , 15.7 flickering

No, both are 1920x1200. DVI + DP. But the issue produces at lower resolution on HDMI display too. I did not test a DP display (issue goes away for 20-30 mins if change a resolution or change bits per pixel or on/off on a display that connected to Display Port).

Recently acquired R9 380X connected to Dell U2312HM via DisplayPort .Installed first Crimson and afterwards 15.11.1 .Appearance of horizontal distorted lines starts after
boot into Win 7 x64 is completed .The problem is present either on plain 2D usage or anything 3D .The problem is of obvious software nature introduced with 15.7 drivers and
onwards - I can't test older drivers as Tonga XT dates from November .Just to emphasize that this happens ONLY with DP connection and so there are two simple solutions that
worked for me :
1. simple unplug of DP connector from graphic card and reinsertion does the trick
2. opening the screen resolution panel and changing picture orientation to flipped and reverting back also resolves the problem

I can only hope that someone from the driver team is reading this thread as this is a stupid omission and as such CAN and SHOULD be easily fixed ...

There are thousand of posts explaining the issue and some are getting it on 3 x 1080p monitors.

 

[RussianSensation]

There are thousand of posts explaining the issue and some are getting it on 3 x 1080p monitors.

Ya so if AMD isn't serving your needs, buy 980Ti Tri-SLI and see how that works out but NV requires 3 identical monitors for 3D Vision Surround so you cannot use your 4K monitor + 2x1440P monitors for 3x1440P gaming surround, without selling the 4K OR selling the Qnix and buying 2 more identical 4K monitors.

980Ti - 3-way SLI - 3D Vision Surround (Eyefinity competitor):
>"All monitors must be the same make and model for 3D Vision Surround"
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/surround/system-requirements

That means NV users would never even have your driver issues since NV doesn't even allow the setup you have for 3D gaming. Maybe Pascal will change that in 2016 and you have just 6 or so months to wait.

 

[KaRLiToS]

Ya so if AMD isn't serving your needs, buy 980Ti Tri-SLI and see how that works out but NV requires 3 identical monitors for 3D Vision Surround so you cannot use your 4K monitor + 2x1440P monitors for 3x1440P gaming surround, without selling the 4K OR selling the Qnix and buying 2 more identical 4K monitors.

980Ti - 3-way SLI - 3D Vision Surround (Eyefinity competitor):
>"All monitors must be the same make and model for 3D Vision Surround"
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/surround/system-requirements

That means NV users would never even have your driver issues since NV doesn't even allow the setup you have for 3D gaming. Maybe Pascal will change that in 2016 and you have just 6 or so months to wait.

Wrong, Eyefinity equivalent is 2D Vision Surround

G-SYNC and regular monitors can be mixed in Surround; effects of G-SYNC will only be seen on G-SYNC- enabled monitors

I know it is hard to accept that AMD constantly breaks drivers. No I'm not gonna buy another 28nm cards and invest for 3 x GTX 980ti to have 6-7% more FPS

 

[Headfoot]

adding my data to the pool, I have 3x1080p Dell s2415h Eyefinity set up and 2 x 290 in crossfire. I have seen no flickering issues like yours so far, I'm running the latest crimson driver. 2 connected via DVI and one connected via HDMI all off of the primary card.

I am however getting strange square artifacts in SW:BF and Fallout 4. This is reproducible on a few other computers with 290/390 cards.

 

[KaRLiToS]

The issue is related to Display Port, you don't use that output so of course you don't get it. And my issue has been appearing since 15.7 so Crimson drivers is unrelated.

 

[zlatan]

The issue is related to Display Port, you don't use that output so of course you don't get it.

Nop. This is a synchronization issue. There are more than one independent display engines in the GPUs. One engine for the DisplayPorts, and one or more engine for DVI/HDMI. The synchronization will be good if the whole screen is fully inside the display engine. So you need to use only the DisplayPort outputs. Using a second display engine will may lead to synchronization issues with flickering. While some optimization may prevent this, there are no natural paths to fully solve the problem in software. This is why the external sync modules exist. With one of these you can use three monitors with different outputs and with fully synchronized screen without flickering.

 

[KaRLiToS]

I cannot run 7680x1440 @ 60fps with the Display port hub you are referring to. If it was the case, I would already have those hubs if they supported my resolution.

And what I meant is the issue I'm getting is about display port and all other users experiencing it have a monitor plugged into display port. If they try in HDMI port, the issue is going away. But again I cannot do this because HDMI 1.4 don't run 2560*1440 @ 60 fps.

In other words, Headfoot issues are completly unrelated to the one I'm getting.

 

[Mercennarius]

I have a 290X and after the latest driver update 2 weeks ago(WHQL update) I started noticing a small flickering issue as well. Only happens maybe once every 30 minutes and it seems to only happen at the top 10% of the screen. A single bar shape about half an inch wide flashes across at the top very quickly. Resolution is set to 4K@60Hz through a DisplayPort obviously. Card and monitor are both only a few months old. Wonder if this is caused by the same issue you're having?

 

[KaRLiToS]

15.12 (Crimson) release notes

Known issues

Known Issues
[82789] Total War&#8482; : Rome II : Choppy gameplay may be experienced
[82788] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Frame freezing during gameplay may be experienced
[82794] Just Cause 3 - The system may hang when task switching on systems with AMD CPUs and GPUs
[82775] Just Cause 3 - Flickering may be experienced during gameplay and on menu screens
[82778] Anno 2205 - Water splatter may flicker during in Ultra high mode on 4K displays
[82779] Fallout 4 - Gameplay may be choppy in AMD Freesync&#8482; mode in Ultra mode at 1440p resolution
[58978] Dirt Rally - A crash may be experienced starting a new race with AMD Crossfire&#8482; and AMD Freesync&#8482; enabled
[59475] Elite: Dangerous - Poor performance may be experienced in SuperCruise mode under Windows® 10
[78139] PowerDVD - 3D playback may fail on some configurations using an HDMI 2.0 dongle
[79428] Starcraft 2: Flickering may be observed in the 'Episode 3' campaign
[80251] Fable Legends: The DirectX® 12 benchmark may fail to launch on some configurations
[80836] Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 - Flickering or poor performance may be experienced when running in AMD Crossfire&#8482; mode
[81402] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - A crash may be experienced when setting game to Ultra-High graphics mode
[81403] Flickering may be observed on some Freesync monitors while playing Wolfenstein - The New Order and Battlefield&#8482;: Hardline with Vsync disabled
[81448] A system restart may be experience when waking the system from sleep mode on some systems with Intel processors
[81489] Unable to create 4x1 or 2.1 portrait mode SLS with 4K displays
[81651] Star Wars&#8482;: Battlefront - texture corruption may be experienced if the game "Field of View" setting is > 100
[81736] Call of Duty Online - the game may crash if the Printscreen key is pressed on a 4K monitor
[81777] Launching a game from the Game Manager may launch on a single display after enabling and disabling AMD Crossfire&#8482; in a 3x1 AMD Eyefinity&#8482; setup
[81809] A crash may be experienced if an HDMI&#8482; display is a cloned display device on an HP Envy 15 notebook
[81844] Unable to change resolution if a wireless display is the only connected display
[81856] Marginally increased power consumption may be observed during video playback
[81859] Flickering may be experienced on some monitors when AMD Freesync&#8482; is enabled
[81915] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - Building textures may be missing on some AMD Freesync&#8482; displays with Vsync enabled
[82083] Ark Survival Evolved - Poor performance may be experienced when running in AMD Crossfire&#8482; mode
[82093] Star Wars&#8482; : Battlefront - Some flickering may be experienced in shaded areas of the screen while game levels are loading
[82213] Star Wars&#8482; : Battlefront - Some users may experience minor flickering or corruption at different game location or while viewing the in-game cinematics
[82387] Assassin's Creed Syndicate - The game may crash if the Gaming Evolved "In Game Overlay" is enabled. A temporary workaround is to disable the AMD Gaming Evolved "In Game Overlay"

I know I don't have Freesync but those issues started around the time AMD introduced new Winodws 10 drivers along Crossfire Freesync support. I don't know if something is messed up between AMD eyefinity and AMD Freesync but I get this crash when launching a Dirt rally race, works 1 time out of 5 try.

http://techreport.com/news/28602/catalyst-15-7-drivers-enable-freesync-with-crossfire

AMD released its Catalyst 15.7 graphics drivers today. This WHQL driver enables FreeSync with CrossFire multi-GPU setups, and it's also supposed to provide some Windows 10 feature support like HEVC decode for Xbox Video Player, game streaming from Xbox One consoles to the PC, and WDDM 2.0.

I'm pretty sure they might have broke something with Crossfire and Eyefinity when trying to implement Freesync + Crossfire.
Note that Freesync absolutely requires a Display Port connection to work.And that my issue is related directly to display port synchronization.

I think this might be a good clue for you AMD.

 

[digitaldurandal]

I installed Windows 10 and decided to go ahead and upgrade to Crimson 15.12 even though bezel correction is not available for me using it and I too experience the flicker issue. All of my monitors are 1920x1200 2x DVI-D 1xDP. No issues with drivers older that 15.5 for sure.

I can play a game or use eyefinity for a few hours before it starts. If I turn off my DP monitor and then turn it back on the issue will subside for another few hours. Pretty ridiculous.

 

[3DVagabond]

They've acknowledged the issue. We know it exists. Just need to wait for them to fix it I guess?

 

[KaRLiToS]

They've acknowledged the issue. We know it exists. Just need to wait for them to fix it I guess?

Where did they aknowledge the issue?

 

[Stuka87]

I apologize if I missed where you already answered this, but have you contacted AMD about this issue? To see if you can work with them in resolving it? I remember you talking to them about the issue you had when you first got your 4k display and your 290Xs.