Monitor Refresh Rate and Flickering

[Mystical Spork]

So this is something I thought about trouble shooting and ask questions about with someone who knows about PC tech support stuff, but I figure it would be better to ask the community here if they know anything about my specific issue.

So, I have what I think could be a major issue down the line with my monitor and it's something that just recently started happening. My monitor has a flickering problem that only happens at the bottom task bar section of the screen where it only flickers at the task bar and it flickers with a reflection of the top part of the screen, the opposite of the task bar.

Now this eventually goes away and I think it's because after I do a restart or Windows Defender Offline scan which also happens to restart my computer. After maybe a day or so, it happens again and I do the same thing, I don't know what's the problem?

I read somewhere that adjusting my refresh rate could probably fix this, but I also noticed that my refresh rate doesn't stay at 60 hz when I set it to that and later I check back and it's back to 144 hz display which I did not set to that default. So I don't know what's up with that if anybody knows?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Which Monitor is it?
Why would anyone ever use 60Hz, period?
The issue is often because of the Cable; buy a new cable or try a different cable and see.
DP cables that ship with Monitors are junk and never work for me; I always buy my own; like Cable-Matters DP 1.4 cables. They never give me such issues.

If you have a Monitor that has Options for 144Hz or higher AND 1ms Motion Blur Reduction; enable the high refresh rate, disable the 1ms MBR

Run Disk Cleanup via Run As Admin.
Tick the box for DX Cache and click OK to remove that, then restart Windows.
As DX Cache is used for the OS Desktop.

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Which Monitor is it?
Why would anyone ever use 60Hz, period?
The issue is often because of the Cable; buy a new cable or try a different cable and see.
DP cables that ship with Monitors are junk and never work for me; I always buy my own; like Cable-Matters DP 1.4 cables. They never give me such issues.

If you have a Monitor that has Options for 144Hz or higher AND 1ms Motion Blur Reduction; enable the high refresh rate, disable the 1ms MBR

Run Disk Cleanup via Run As Admin.
Tick the box for DX Cache and click OK to remove that, then restart Windows.
As DX Cache is used for the OS Desktop.

I'm using a laptop, by the way.

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Which Monitor is it?
Why would anyone ever use 60Hz, period?
The issue is often because of the Cable; buy a new cable or try a different cable and see.
DP cables that ship with Monitors are junk and never work for me; I always buy my own; like Cable-Matters DP 1.4 cables. They never give me such issues.

If you have a Monitor that has Options for 144Hz or higher AND 1ms Motion Blur Reduction; enable the high refresh rate, disable the 1ms MBR

Run Disk Cleanup via Run As Admin.
Tick the box for DX Cache and click OK to remove that, then restart Windows.
As DX Cache is used for the OS Desktop.

Also, how would you know those things work exactly, can you explain in detail?

[_I_]

what part?

motion blur reduction?
thats backlight strobing, flicker the backlight off while pixels are changing colors to reduce blur, but it also makes the image much darker since the backlight is not on for its full time, only 1ms pulses

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by _I_:

what part?

motion blur reduction?
thats backlight strobing, flicker the backlight off while pixels are changing colors to reduce blur, but it also makes the image much darker since the backlight is not on for its full time, only 1ms pulses

Yeah, let me just briefly mention I'm not very tech savvy when it comes to PC trouble shooting, so I would ask for some explanation on what some of this tinkering with command prompts does before I attempt to do it?

[skOsH♥]

Well, something like what you are experiencing is definitely something to do with the monitor and the way it displays, I guess you could check the firmware and see if it has settings you can change

The best you could do to mitigate this, is in graphics settings to change the gamma/brightness. It's going to be noticeable.

You said it was a laptop, though? Is it just 60hz through the laptop? If that's the case then I would just shop around for a monitor, at least 144hz, and make sure it has a displayport connection, on your laptop, do you see a connection that looks similar to USB type A (narrow but large rectangle hookup--the original usb style connector), but the end on displayport has a diagonal notch on the female connector (the one you want to look for on your laptop).

You can also get a monitor with a usb 3.1 connection, nowadays. That's the one that we know and love for its ability to be plugged in right handed or left handed, that most modern phones and USB devices use. That could be ran to an external display.

If you have one of those connections, then you can get a fairly inexpensive monitor, not with all the bells and whistles, and just connect it to the laptop.

If you just need to use the laptop, again, on my older displays, I had to just adjust gamma/brightness. There was really no other way to mitigate it.

It sounds like this display is a TN panel display, by the way you are describing this aberration of the display related to its refresh rate, and so with dark environments, you're going to see basically a lot of grey dots when the camera pans or the scene changes in low light scenarios.

[_I_]

thats a setting in the monitors osd menu

it may be a few menus deep, look for motion blur reduction and disable it

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by _I_:

thats a setting in the monitors osd menu

it may be a few menus deep, look for motion blur reduction and disable it

What is motion blur specifically used for if it's on by default?

[_I_]

to fake the monitor the '1ms' response time, which the panel does not have
it flickers the backlight on for 1ms, it does not take the panels pixels 1ms to change to the correct colors, g2g time, which was the old definition of 'response time'

its like when intel and amd starting changing the nm scale of the cpus
it used to be the size of transistors in the silicon, now its the tolerance of the mfg process
no actual part of the cpu die is that measurement in nm

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by _I_:

to fake the monitor the '1ms' response time, which the panel does not have
it flickers the backlight on for 1ms, it does not take the panels pixels 1ms to change to the correct colors, g2g time, which was the old definition of 'response time'

its like when intel and amd starting changing the nm scale of the cpus
it used to be the size of transistors in the silicon, now its the tolerance of the mfg process
no actual part of the cpu die is that measurement in nm

That's interesting. What would you say is specifically my issue and have you or anyone else ever encountered something similar before and managed to fix it?

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Some games can flicker when using certain settings also. I notice it more when 1ms MBR is enabled but not so much when it's off if at all. But games like Red Dead 2 for example, when using TAA and not fine tuning the TAA Sharpeness due it needs to be fine tuned for your Screen + Res to not flicker when moving the camera around

You shouldn't be having any flicker on OS Desktop and non Gaming though

[Mystical Spork]

Originally posted by Bad 💀 Motha:

Some games can flicker when using certain settings also. I notice it more when 1ms MBR is enabled but not so much when it's off if at all. But games like Red Dead 2 for example, when using TAA and not fine tuning the TAA Sharpeness due it needs to be fine tuned for your Screen + Res to not flicker when moving the camera around

I wasn't playing any games when the flickering happens. It happens on my home screen after a few minutes after booting up.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

And then afterwards?

It's normal when the OS is still loading.

[_I_]

i think its an issue with vrr (gsync or freeesync) with mbr
it screws with the timing and with long the leds should be on for to maintain the same overall brightness
the display is not sure when to change display refreshes until the gpu tells it

[skOsH♥]

Originally posted by _I_:

i think its an issue with vrr (gsync or freeesync) with mbr
it screws with the timing and with long the leds should be on for to maintain the same overall brightness
the display is not sure when to change display refreshes until the gpu tells it

That sounds exactly like what it is