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  1. #1
    Sea Torques
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    Second Monitor Flicker [HD5850]

    I have one monitor connected through DVI and one through the HDMI (with a converter to DVI). If I use either monitor by itself, they work fine. If, however, I plug them both in, whichever monitor shows up as number 2 in the Catalyst Control Center has an odd flickering where a black bar will appear across the screen for a split second. I can reproduce it by opening up a tab with YouTube (it flickers before it loads the video) and closing a YouTube tab (flickers after it was closed). Even if the video is on the first monitor, the second will flicker. I looked up some things on the internet, and everything I've read seems to say that the latest drivers should fix that. I've uninstalled, run a driver cleaner, and reinstalled, but I still experience the same issue.

    The other fix I've read says there is an issue when the card switches between modes (2D mode or something) and the solution was to change the clock speeds. I tried to figure out what they were talking about, but this is the first ATI card I've owned in years and I've had no luck fixing it.

    Any suggestions or insight into the issue would be extremely helpful.

  2. #2
    And they're spectacular!
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    Disabling hardware acceleration in your Adobe flash settings should do the trick. While viewing any flash (Youtube video, etc) item, right-click within the item, and select Settings. That should load the Adobe flash player settings. Click on the left-most icon (looks like a monitor) to load the display tab, then uncheck Enable Hardware Acceleration.

  3. #3
    Sea Torques
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    I tried that solution yesterday and it didn't change anything. I tried it again today, however, and it did stop the flickering. I don't think I restarted the browser yesterday, which might've stopped the settings from taking. Thanks, I never would've tried it again.

    I also read about that solution yesterday, but it seems like that solution would only fix a symptom and not the actual cause of the problem. I noted last night that opening a YouTube tab caused the memory clock to drop to 900MHz (from 1000). When I closed it, it would go back to 1000MHz. I suppose if it doesn't happen anywhere else, it doesn't matter how I fix it, but if it does start happening somewhere else, is there any way I can get the memory clock speed to stay the same? I tried setting profiles and all those other suggestions, but mine was already set to run at a constant 1000MHz (so I don't understand why it changes at all).

  4. #4
    Chram
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tidane View Post
    I tried that solution yesterday and it didn't change anything. I tried it again today, however, and it did stop the flickering. I don't think I restarted the browser yesterday, which might've stopped the settings from taking. Thanks, I never would've tried it again.

    I also read about that solution yesterday, but it seems like that solution would only fix a symptom and not the actual cause of the problem. I noted last night that opening a YouTube tab caused the memory clock to drop to 900MHz (from 1000). When I closed it, it would go back to 1000MHz. I suppose if it doesn't happen anywhere else, it doesn't matter how I fix it, but if it does start happening somewhere else, is there any way I can get the memory clock speed to stay the same? I tried setting profiles and all those other suggestions, but mine was already set to run at a constant 1000MHz (so I don't understand why it changes at all).
    I've noticed that opening certain videos will cause my 5870 to downclock as well until I close it. Overall I'm happy with my card but there are certain things like this that I find extremely annoying.

  5. #5
    And they're spectacular!
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    It's a driver issue for sure. When I first got my 5850 back in December, I was using the drivers from the install CD that came with the card. While that's generally frowned upon, I never encountered this issue with those old drivers. However, I was forced to update them get the FFXIV benchmark to run (I think I was using 10.5, since my PC and CCC didn't play well with 10.6), and that's when this issue started to occur.

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