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Intel HD 4000 Graphics (i7-3770K) occasional flicker

idata
Employee
28,109 Views

I have an i7-3770K on an Asus P8Z77-V PRO and am using the on-board Intel HD 4000 Graphics to drive two displays.

My displays are a Dell 3008WFP at 2560x1600 on DisplayPort, and a Dell 2407WFPHC at 1200x1920 (rotated 90 degrees to portrait) on DVI.

Running the latest drivers (8.15.10.2761) on Windows 7 Ultimate N x64.

32GB memory, water cooling, Intel 240GB SATA3 SSD and a 750W Corsair PSU round out the box.

When working (writing code, web surfing, watching video) on the machine, the video will quickly cut out on one monitor or the other and then come back. The 24" Dell on DVI handles this [in a small fraction of a second] like a champ and I hardly notice. The Dell 30" looses the signal, goes blank and then takes a couple seconds to reacquire the signal before showing the desktop again... it's REALLY annoying!!

Anyone seen something like this before, or have ideas?

I've changed the DisplayPort & DVI cables, tried a different motherboard of the same model, tried a motherboard from a different manufacturer (Gigabyte), hooked it up to a Dell 3011WFP (which re-acquires the signal much faster than the 3008WFP btw), reset monitors to factory defaults, and installed the latest drivers. To no avail.

Help?!?

1 Solution
ROBERT_U_Intel
Employee
11,892 Views

Hi All

This issue is a BIOS issue specifically with the Memory Reference Code (MRC) version 1.4.0.0 or older. Please contact your system or motherboard manufacturer for a system BIOS update for your system or motherboard that includes MRC 1.5.0.0 or newer.

If you have a system with 2 or more memory modules and are comfortable with removing all but one of them so that your memory is in single channel mode, try and remove all but one of them and the issue will go away. This can be used as a workaround until you are able to update your system BIOS from your system or motherboard manufacturer that includes MRC 1.5.0.0 or newer.

View solution in original post

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129 Replies
ROBERT_U_Intel
Employee
5,149 Views

Hi'

Did the issue occur with the previous drivers or only after installing the 2761 drivers?

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

It occurred with the previous version (8.15.10.2696) of the drivers on the Asus motherboard. I believe the Gigabyte shipped with a version which was older than that, and it occurred there too.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

Though some of the details vary, I have had a somewhat similar experience with my Lenovo ThinkPad T430s laptop running Intel HD 4000 Graphics. It is brand new, just received a few days ago.

My setup is as follows:

- Dell U2711 2560x1440 external display, connected via DisplayPort

- ThinkPad T430s with i7-3520, 16GB Ram, Samsung 830 256GB SATA3 SSD

- Windows 7 x64 Professional

- Intel HD 4000 Graphics (Driver 8.15.10.2696)

- ThinkPad sitting in docking station

In the few days I've had the system, I have had the Dell display go completely black. Other times, it goes black with some small (few pixels wide or tall) stripes of colored pixels (red is most noticeable) around the left and top edge of the screen. It would happen intermittently, and strangely enough only on the external Dell display over DisplayPort. In the time the Dell display goes black, the integrated display on the ThinkPad is still operational (I can move my cursor over to that screen and see it fine).

The way I'm able to get the display back is by either:

- disconnecting the laptop from the dock, then popping it back on

- turning off the external display and then turning back on

- unplugging the cable and then plugging back in

Once, today, it the picture came back on by itself after a few seconds (more similar to the behavior you're experiencing and describing it seems).

All drivers are up to date, and this is a brand-new machine. I was using a ThinkPad T410s with discrete NVIDIA Optimus graphics, with the entire setup (docking station, cables, Dell monitor) identical. The only thing that's changed is the new system with Intel HD 4000 Graphics.

Edit: For what it's worth, I this has been happening a few times a day, and it almost seems to happen pretty consistently when I click on a link or do something in my browser (I'm using FireFox 13.0.1). It could be that I spend much of my day in a browser so it shouldn't be surprising; but I have noticed on more than one occasion that the moment I click the mouse the screen goes black.

idata
Employee
5,149 Views

When one of my monitors flickers out, I can still see and work with programs displayed on the other monitor.

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idata
Employee
3,911 Views

@Robert_U

Thank you for the reply, and for your efforts to get at the bottom of this. I know we all appreciate it.

I was one of the first to reply to the the thread and so I've got a bunch of information about my setup & experiences peppered throughout the conversation. Here is my first post, which contains my setup information:

Jon wrote:

Though some of the details vary, I have had a somewhat similar experience with my Lenovo ThinkPad T430s laptop running Intel HD 4000 Graphics. It is brand new, just received a few days ago.

My setup is as follows:

- Dell U2711 2560x1440 external display, connected via DisplayPort

- ThinkPad T430s with i7-3520, 16GB Ram, Samsung 830 256GB SATA3 SSD

- Windows 7 x64 Professional

- Intel HD 4000 Graphics (Driver 8.15.10.2696)

- ThinkPad sitting in docking station

In the few days I've had the system, I have had the Dell display go completely black. Other times, it goes black with some small (few pixels wide or tall) stripes of colored pixels (red is most noticeable) around the left and top edge of the screen. It would happen intermittently, and strangely enough only on the external Dell display over DisplayPort. In the time the Dell display goes black, the integrated display on the ThinkPad is still operational (I can move my cursor over to that screen and see it fine).

The way I'm able to get the display back is by either:

- disconnecting the laptop from the dock, then popping it back on

- turning off the external display and then turning back on

- unplugging the cable and then plugging back in

Once, today, it the picture came back on by itself after a few seconds (more similar to the behavior you're experiencing and describing it seems).

All drivers are up to date, and this is a brand-new machine. I was using a ThinkPad T410s with discrete NVIDIA Optimus graphics, with the entire setup (docking station, cables, Dell monitor) identical. The only thing that's changed is the new system with Intel HD 4000 Graphics.

Edit: For what it's worth, I this has been happening a few times a day, and it almost seems to happen pretty consistently when I click on a link or do something in my browser (I'm using FireFox 13.0.1). It could be that I spend much of my day in a browser so it shouldn't be surprising; but I have noticed on more than one occasion that the moment I click the mouse the screen goes black.

There is also an image I posted of what my screen will look like some of the times (the red stripe on the left and the multi-colored pixel groupings along the top). Please let me know if you need any additional information to help replicate the issue.

Thank you again for the reply.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

I have the same motherboard that you have, and I am having problems with the Intel display driver (HD 4000) driver in Windows 7 64-bit.

When I load the driver I get DPC's that are so high in some situations I can't use the computer for its' intended purpose, digital signal processing. I check DPC's with DPCLAT.EXE. The effect is easy to produce. Run DPCLAT or some other DPC monitor, start a command prompt (CMD), point to the root directory on the C drive (c:, cd\), and enter dir /s. This command simply displays the files on the C drive, but the DPC's go through the roof. As soon as the command finishes the DPC's go back down to something under 100us.

If I uninstall the Intel driver and use the standard WIndows 7 VGA driver the problem disappears. Have you looked at the DPC's being generated in your machine?

idata
Employee
5,148 Views

Thanks for the suggestion!!

Checking DPC's I see a normal baseline in the vicinity of 80-125us. Doing a "dir/a/s" test from the root of my drive, I see a 2000-3500us (oh noes!) level, with returns to the baseline every couple seconds. Decreasing the height of the CMD.EXE window to 10 lines eliminated the returns to baseline and caused a latency between 2000-3500us on each measurement throughout the test. During a test, I minimized the cmd.exe window, and DPC levels returned to baseline wile the test continued. Maximizing the window again while the test was still running returned the elevated level. Switching to the Windows 7 VGA driver also allows my system to run this test without any increase in average DPC latency.

This definitely points to a problem with the driver. However, while looking at this I have not seen a correlation between one of my screens flickering out and a high/spiking DPC latency being displayed by this tool. Maybe it does not point to my problem?

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idata
Employee
5,148 Views

Another thought (to see if our problems are related):

When your screen goes black, does your monitor indicate that the signal has been lost? Mine does not; it continues to operate as if it has a signal (does not go into sleep mode), it just displays either a completely black screen, or the screen with the flickering red pixels along the left side and colored pixels in groups along the top.

My guess here is that it's absolutely related to the Intel drivers, and thus a fix will only come by escalating the issue with Intel.

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idata
Employee
5,148 Views

Honestly I'm unsure, but it looks like the signal is lost completely. I say that because the 30" Dell shows the DisplayPort icon as the image returns... much like it does when returning from Power Save (display-turn-off). The flicker takes about as much time to return as Power Save does to come back if I hit the mouse immediately.

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rjal
New Contributor I
5,148 Views

Hi I have the same problem here as well. I have 30" hp LP3065 connected through displayport to duallink-dvi converter.

whenever i try to display pictures or video the display can crash. i have no idea what's so special about the content i have. At first i thought it happened when there where a lot of highlights in the scene but that is not consistent. Then i though the amount of HF content causes it but i don' think that it's that either.

It happens so often that i have now decided to go back to my old ATI graphics card.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

Something else I noticed here; I used the same laptop in a docking station at the office with a Dell 24" U2410 (1920x1080) along with the built-in Lenovo display (1600x900) over DisplayPort and haven't experienced the issue (yet). There is obviously a much higher resolution with the display that is experiencing the persistent issues (2560x1440), and it seems like the people having these issues are all using one or more very high-resolution screens.

As I've only spent a limited amount of time at the office on the 24" (1920x1080) it's hard to conclusively say that it will never happen there; though it sometimes happens every few minutes on the high-res 27" so I would think it should show up pretty quickly on the 24" if it's going to happen.

Like robertjal has indicated, it does seem to be a certain kind of activity happening on the screen. Clicking on links or opening windows have elicited the behavior, but it definitely corresponds to some action taking place that yields some change in the displayed picture. So far, it seems pretty consistently for me that it's browser behaviors that trigger the screen shut-off, though I do spend quite a bit of time in the browser.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

One more thing; when the issue happens it sometimes causes the external screen to go black, but other times it creates the red pixel stripe and color blocks at the top. Here is a photo of this behavior:

On a side note, I saw this same pattern come up at some point when I ran the Windows Experience Index that runs a bunch of performance tests on the system. Not sure if or how that might be relevant.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

Since this really appears to be a driver issue, I began escalating the issue with Intel.

Here's some relevant information...

Release notes about the latest version show that development has addressed some high-priority multiple monitor issues with this driver.

Release notes from previous driver version [8.15.10.2696] released on April 3, 2012:

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/21160/eng/ReleaseNotes_GFX_64.pdf http://downloadmirror.intel.com/21160/eng/ReleaseNotes_GFX_64.pdf

Release notes from current driver version [8.15.10.2761] released on May 24, 2012:

http://downloadmirror.intel.com/21430/eng/relnotes_gfx64_2761.pdf http://downloadmirror.intel.com/21430/eng/relnotes_gfx64_2761.pdf

The RSS feed for driver updates:

http://feeds.downloadcenter.intel.com/rss/?p=3498&lang=eng http://feeds.downloadcenter.intel.com/rss/?p=3498&lang=eng

The Intel Driver Update Utility:

http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect?iid=dc_iduu http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect?iid=dc_iduu

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

I have the same problem as you guys, but it seems that my flickering happens more often. It's incredibly frustrating after spending so much on a 3770k that there's flickering without even doing any heavy lifting.

3770k

ASUS P8Z77-V Premium motherboard

HP ZR30w monitor 1 through Displayport (DVI and HDMI also have flickering)

Samsung tv monitor 2 through HDMI (have also tried Hanns G 27 inch as well with DVI)

Win 7 x64

And nothing seems to work. Both the driver 2696 and the latest one 2761 show no change. What makes me think this might be hardware is that this happens in the BIOS long before Windows drivers get loaded. In BIOS it was happening more, but over time it seems to be happening far more frequently now in Windows. It happens completely randomly no matter what I'm doing. It just flickered to black 4 times with about .5 second pause between them. Then 10 seconds of no flickering. Then more flickering. Totally random it seems.

Incredibly frustrating.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

I can totally relate. It happens all the time while there's no load on the system.

I am beside myself too, and hope Intel gets this sorted out quickly.

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rjal
New Contributor I
5,149 Views

I agree. This is hardware or videobios somehow and not a driver issue. Maybe it can be fixed with a driver workaround but it is not a problem in the Intel igfx driver. I removed all igfx drivers and ran with the default Microsoft vga driver for a while and this issue was still there. It happens often but it is repeatable, so if I have a jpeg that causes the display to go black it will always do so for that jpeg. Driver version or even the vanilla vga driver don't make any difference.

in video the repeatability is the same. it will go black at the same position every time and is not dependent on the player. ffdshow, wmp, vlc all show the same problem in the stream at the same moment.

I also see the issue on windows 8 consumer preview.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

My problem is not nearly repeatable as you are describing. We may be talking about different issues. How long have you been using your DisplayPort to dual-link DVI converter?

Also, are you running multiple monitors? I have not seen this behavior when I'm only running a single monitor.

Message was edited by: Frojo

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rjal
New Contributor I
5,149 Views

the convertor is almost new. i have used it for a few weeks on my laptop without issues. i also tried another converter but had the same problems. the issue is with the igfx not the converter I'm sure of that.

i tried multi monitor and have also tried single monitor, i have the issue in both cases.

go through you picture album with a viewer like xnview displaying the images in full screen. keep on scrolling (with wheel or cursors) through the images until you find the one that blanks the screen then scroll one back and wait the screen will recover. then scroll back down to the image giving the problem, it should crash again.

sometimes it goes blank on an image but then recovers for that image. but this will always be like that for that image.

if it's not images causing this try to find a webpage that gives the problem, make sure there are no changing elements in there (ads etc) and try to repeatedly browse to the site a few times.

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

And I'm not using a converter. This is almost guaranteed to be the hardware since it happens in BIOS (before loading any Windows-specific drivers) and with direct connections to the monitor.

It seems you guys have it happening during certain things while mine is all the time no matter what is happening. I could be browsing, not browsing, no open programs, multiple open programs and it doesn't matter. Same behavior...

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idata
Employee
5,149 Views

I tried @robertjal 's test... It's pretty clear we are not having the same problem.

My computer will drop video momentarily at any time: It doesn't matter what I'm doing, or if I'm even doing anything at all. Even when I tried, the computer has never repeatedly dropped video when repeatedly viewing the same image / web-page / video. I am also not using a converter, only direct connections.

Don't know about seeing this happen in the BIOS. Tried a couple different things, but can't seem to get my BIOS to acknowledge the monitor on DisplayPort.

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