ATI Overdrive low 2D clocks causes screen flicker - FIX!!

Post by **Delphium** » 23 Jun 2011, 17:16

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.

Dubardo · Post by **Dubardo** » 14 Jul 2011, 16:05

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:

Code: Select all

[h4]&lt;Feature name=&quot;MemoryClockTarget_0&quot;&gt;

   &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_0&quot; value=&quot;60000&quot; /&gt;

   &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_1&quot; value=&quot;<strong><u>60000</u></strong>&quot; /&gt;

   &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_2&quot; value=&quot;130000&quot; /&gt;[/h4]

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...

ian2000gsxr · Post by **ian2000gsxr** » 18 Jul 2011, 01:22

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

xcloudx · Post by **xcloudx** » 18 Jul 2011, 18:12

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?

Post by **Delphium** » 18 Jul 2011, 20:30

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?

xcloudx · Post by **xcloudx** » 19 Jul 2011, 13:34

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

ouija · Post by **ouija** » 30 Jul 2011, 15:12

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 ?

farhadvsn · Post by **farhadvsn** » 21 Mar 2012, 08:36

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

Post by **Haldi** » 22 Mar 2012, 00:46

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!

Vesper · Post by **Vesper** » 17 Apr 2012, 23:34

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.

Code: Select all

 &lt;Feature name=&quot;CoreClockTarget_0&quot;&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_0&quot; value=&quot;15700&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_1&quot; value=&quot;55000&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_2&quot; value=&quot;72500&quot; /&gt;

           &lt;/Feature&gt;

           &lt;Feature name=&quot;PowerControl_0&quot;&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want&quot; value=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;

           &lt;/Feature&gt;

           &lt;Feature name=&quot;MemoryClockTarget_0&quot;&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_0&quot; value=&quot;30000&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_1&quot; value=&quot;90000&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_2&quot; value=&quot;100000&quot; /&gt;

           &lt;/Feature&gt;

           &lt;Feature name=&quot;CoreVoltageTarget_0&quot;&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_0&quot; value=&quot;950&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_1&quot; value=&quot;1038&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_2&quot; value=&quot;1088&quot; /&gt;

           &lt;/Feature&gt;

           &lt;Feature name=&quot;MemoryVoltageTarget_0&quot;&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_0&quot; value=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_1&quot; value=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;

             &lt;Property name=&quot;Want_2&quot; value=&quot;0&quot; /&gt;

           &lt;/Feature&gt;

Any help is appreciated!

Post by **Haldi** » 18 Apr 2012, 18:07

Uh what? I knew that 12.2/3 have problems with downclocking to idle clock. But i didn't expect them to clock down to far xD
If they do! You checked Idle Clock with tools like Afterburner/GPU-Z or in CCC Overdeive menue? Before and after driver update? If i were you. uninstall driver and reinstall old ones!

forsayken · Post by **forsayken** » 26 Apr 2012, 04:49

This thread just solved a lot of anger. I got a Radeon 7850 for a friends build. I tried it in my system first because I was curious (I have a 6950 flashed to 6970 - at stock the 7850 is slower). Anyways, within minutes of installing the board and 12.3, I was getting screen flickering, driver crashes, and full hard crashes while in Windows. I was not impressed. But once I got into a game or ran Furmark, everything was rock-solid. Amazing temps and really nice performance. I was a bit baffled. I've never run into a problem like this. I tried 12.4 that dropped today with no luck. I was just about to RMA when I found a link to this thread on the Sapphire forums (it's the Sapphire 7850 OC version btw). It took me some fiddling but I eventually had to set memory to idle at 1250 (stock). I'm sure I could get it way lower but 250 was not enough so just to try to get it stable, I cranked it up to what it'd be at when playing a game. I couldn't get the screen to flicker or driver crash or anything. Normally I could just take my browser window and shake it all over for a minute or two and I'd get a hard crash. I did it until I got bored with no issues.

I'm not really sure what the actual problem was. Maybe switching from 150mhz to 1250mhz on the memory was causing a problem.

I checked the profiles.xml on my 6970, and I guess due to eyefinity (3x22" monitors), it idles much higher. 500/1375.

Hopefully the problem is completely solved with this 7850. My friend is itching to get his new system and I'm anxious to see how far I can OC the the 7850. 1050 (in CCC) is no problem at all.

So thanks again for this thread. Really helped me out!

Shizuku · Post by **Shizuku** » 10 Jun 2012, 19:36

Hi,

I've got this screen flickering thing with my new MSI 7850 Twin Frozr III, it's just like a bit of screen tearing. It happens only while scrolling web pages and it's not always noticeable but when I set the clocks to 700 clock/800 memory the problem doesn't go away... Well, even if it did I'd be pissed anyway because setting the idle clocks to 700/800 has increased my idle temp from 37-40 C to 52 C which is ridiculous! It's really annoying because I shelled out for the card hoping that it would work perfectly well out of the box... Do you think that the card may be flawed? I didn't have any issues when playing games except when I overclocked it to 1 ghz which, as I thought, would be a doodle for this card but it responded with artifacting and messing up my audio after some time... I'm quite disappointed. I'd appreciate any suggestions from you guys.

vorth · Post by **vorth** » 01 Jul 2012, 10:17

Hi,

I've got this screen flickering thing with my new MSI 7850 Twin Frozr III, it's just like a bit of screen tearing. It happens only while scrolling web pages and it's not always noticeable but when I set the clocks to 700 clock/800 memory the problem doesn't go away... Well, even if it did I'd be pissed anyway because setting the idle clocks to 700/800 has increased my idle temp from 37-40 C to 52 C which is ridiculous! It's really annoying because I shelled out for the card hoping that it would work perfectly well out of the box... Do you think that the card may be flawed? I didn't have any issues when playing games except when I overclocked it to 1 ghz which, as I thought, would be a doodle for this card but it responded with artifacting and messing up my audio after some time... I'm quite disappointed. I'd appreciate any suggestions from you guys.

I've got this exact same damn problem.

no idea what to do either, I'm OKAY with electronics and stuff but for the life of me I cant figure out how to fix this. its driving me crazy.

Post by **Haldi** » 01 Jul 2012, 19:09

. It happens only while scrolling web pages and it's not always noticeable but when I set the clocks to 700 clock/800 memory the problem doesn't go away... Well.

Oh... its 10 June... but that might fit... Why didn't you mention the Browser You're using? Firefox ? Which version ?

vorth · Post by **vorth** » 01 Jul 2012, 23:04

happens in all browsers ive tried

not specific to any one in particular... happens else where too, a bit? not as much

kingpanday · Post by **kingpanday** » 22 Aug 2012, 09:47

Ok this is a very VERY big question that I really need questions too. REcently i bought a AMD 7850 2GB Saphhire OC gpu from my local pc hardware store, "Pc Case Gear", in Australia. And I built the whole pc and it worked. Now I am a streamer on twitch tv, and i bought a second monitor just to stream with the dual screens set up . The GPU worked fine with just the 1 screen and i was really happy to see the outcome of the performace. But when I bought a Second monitor and plugged it in i found that the screen that was NOT set as the "main screen", started to flicker, now the flickering setteled down for about hlaf an hour, "after many many options changed", and then it started again and didnt STOP! I have rebooted amany times and it doesnt seem to work ... and seems to be getting worse and worse!
This is how my gpu and the screens are working.

Dvi "on gpu" going to Dvi port "on monitor"
Hdmi adapter to dvi "on gpu" going to dvi on monitor.

One monitor is 21" and the other is 19"

I have tried many fourms and really just cant find a answer to why the card is doing this, please PLEASE help! "My streamers need me"

Please if you guys have any idea on why this is not working please

PLEASE HELP!

Post by **Delphium** » 22 Aug 2012, 11:55

kingpanday have you attempted to adjust the clocks/powers as indicated in this thread, it should help to resolve that issue?

When addtional outputs to montors are connected the card has more work to do, however rare seems to increase the idle clocks enough to handle addtional displays.
This is a really crappy issue that AMD seriously need to fix up as its been going on for far to long now.

Post by **Haldi** » 22 Aug 2012, 20:37

you sure its 2D Clock issed ?

Tried running Furmark in Windowed mode ? Still flickering? Then it's not 2D Clock issue!
Maybe broken Cable/monitor? or wrong refresh rate?

necrogeddon · Post by **necrogeddon** » 22 Sep 2012, 17:04

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.

Widescreen Gaming Forum

ATI Overdrive low 2D clocks causes screen flicker - FIX!!

ATI Overdrive low 2D clocks causes screen flicker - FIX!!

On my XFX5870 the DP(main)

Thank you so much for posting

Thanks for posting this but i

xcloudx wrote:Thanks for

I've tried that, It acts kind

I have a 5970 and have

Screen flickering is killing my eyes! :( please help

If you have Flicker WHILE

I've been having similiar

Uh what? I knew that 12.2/3

This thread just solved a lot

Hi,I've got this screen

Shizuku wrote:Hi,I've got

Shizuku wrote:. It happens

happens in all browsers ive

MY MONITORS ARNT WORKING!!!!

kingpanday have you attempted

you sure its 2D Clock issed

Delphium wrote:Recently I

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