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Help with screen flickering

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Donnie_Darko

Guest
Joined
Oct 28, 2014
Posts
5
Hello Entropians!
I hope someone can help me with this issue..
Today I updated my ATI Catalyst video drivers hoping that I can improve my gaming performance.
After video card update when I launch the game - starting from log in section my screen starts to flicker as it would have some frame rate issue, but I think that is not the case. When I switch to Windowed mode everything seams to be fine. I was wondering maybe someone has had the same issue and managed to fix it? - I have to add that with my old video drivers game was running just fine. Maybe I have to change some settings? How come full screen is flickering, but windowed mode is running just fine? Besides all the other games (Shadow of Mordor, BF3 and BF4 etc.) are running with no problems on medium/high settings..
Thank you for reading this post - I hope someone could give me some clue what to do - realy dont want to play in windowed mode or roll back to older drivers.

Thank you in advance
Donnie Dr.Greenthumb Darko
 
Hey there,

There's a lot of things to check here.

First off, what's the model of your video card?
Also, what settings are you using in game? Are you on high? Medium?

You can also do some self-troubleshooting by turning off and on some more intensive features like anti-aliasing and see if that makes a difference.

Get back to me on this and we'll go from there :)

Also, you can always check with ATI's website and see if they have a newer version of the driver out. Often times the one pushed out to windows update isn't the most recent one from ATI. So, you could try checking to see if another update is available - possibly with a bug fix.

Hope that's helpful - and I'll try to be of further service once we know a little more.

-Faucon
 
Thank you for your quick reply! - I realy appriciate that!
Im playing on HP ProBook G1 laptop that has two video cards:
Intel HD 4600 and AMD Radeon HD 8600/8700M

I have a suspicion that when running EU - game selects Intel HD 4600 rather than AMD card (I sometimes have random crashes mentioning Intel HD 4600 card) - I read forums that EU has or had some issues with dual video cards - thats why I updated drivers in order to have "High Performance" option via AMD Catalyst and swithc to AMD card.
Drivers were downloaded from AMD auto updater - after installing I had this flickering issue.
Drivers offered by Windows worked just fine, but the thing is that they are ancient - I was hoping that instaling newer ones would improve my game play. I tried "fix game" option in the launcer, but cant download 2GB file and check if that helped because I am at work and using Wi-Fi hotspot via mobile phone.
*By the way...maybe it is caused because of bad internet connection? - although that does not explain why on Windowed mode game is running fine..
Currently running game on medium settings- used to be smooth before update (I was hoping that with new driver installed I could run it on high)
One more thing that I find weird...how come I can run all new games on high settings with ease, but EU tends to lag even on medium..I understand that this is an mmo..things happening..people running but is this game so harsh on recources or bad coding :/ - this game looks amazing on very high settings.





FauconIoji said:
Hey there,

There's a lot of things to check here.

First off, what's the model of your video card?
Also, what settings are you using in game? Are you on high? Medium?

You can also do some self-troubleshooting by turning off and on some more intensive features like anti-aliasing and see if that makes a difference.

Get back to me on this and we'll go from there :)

Also, you can always check with ATI's website and see if they have a newer version of the driver out. Often times the one pushed out to windows update isn't the most recent one from ATI. So, you could try checking to see if another update is available - possibly with a bug fix.

Hope that's helpful - and I'll try to be of further service once we know a little more.

-Faucon
Click to expand...
 
Just downloaded drivers via Device manager and everything is running just fine - no flickering.
That is sad though because that driver is like four years old - guess I have to stick with that one in order to play EU. Thanks again for your time and reply - your answer was much appreciated to bad I cant install newer drivers...blame HP and bloody AMD - I never had any issues with Nvidia :/
 
Okay, I'm about to pour a lot of information and things on you, so I apologize in advance for all the writing you're about to have to sift through.

Firstly: EU runs ineffectively mostly because of the engine it's on. MMOs running on a graphics engine like CryTek are still something that's hard to come by today. It was a major undertaking my MA and they're essentially pioneering the whole idea. That being said, it can be inferred that a big reason for the heavy load Entropia causes is the processing that your machine has to do to ensure that the nice graphics on your screen appropriately interface with the commands they're receiving over the internet. That's why most MMO's are still pretty blocky - and why other online games don't utilize an open world.

That being said,

Dual video cards can cause a lot of problems on games in general (and to be perfectly honest I hate the whole principle of using one card sometimes and another card for the big stuff, because the PC never gets it right).

Now, I'm not an expert on ATI graphics cards, so maybe someone else can help me on this one, but I know on nVidia cards, there is an option to always use the nVidia card for everything. That's what I did on my Asus ROG and it worked for me. However, if you're running the game on medium, you're most likely not running the game on the intel card, so I doubt that's the problem. To be sure, though, you could try hooking up an HDMI-capable monitor to your laptop and running the game on that. Typically HDMI ports are hardware-interfaced with the better card. So, try that, turn your laptop monitor off and see if you notice a difference. That should confirm the intel-ATI thing.

If you got the drivers from the ATI auto-updater, there still could be newer ones on the website that haven't been pushed down to everyone yet - I would encourage you to go check anyway for good measure :)

Finally, here's a little piece that a lot of troubleshooters miss: Make sure your power settings in windows are set to high performance - NOT Balanced or power saver. Many laptops dual-carding it underpower the bigger graphics card to save battery life and then never give it the power it needs. Changing your settings to high performance can seriously increase the effectiveness of mobile graphics processors. So, try that and see if that makes a difference. It's possible that the new drivers increased your card's effectiveness to interface with the laptop, and now it simply can't keep up because its being underpowered. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen that happen.

Last but not least, does ATI have a system that allows you to choose your secondary processor? If it does, make sure that you allow the system to "automatically select" your secondary processor, as this will give the card some flexibility to utilize the CPU for assistance with processing complex physics algorithms, etc and that's very useful for any game running the crytek engine.

Let me know how you make out on this - and if anyone else can chime in who has an ATI card with more specific instructions on the above mentioned suggestions, it would be helpful ^^
 
Thanks again for your reply! - great post!
Cant wait to test everything out when I get back home.
Downloaded/installed latest drivers from the AMD site, tweaked some options in Catalyst and changed laptop settings to high performance rather than balanced - I rely hope that high performance option will do the trick and maybe I will be able to play on very high settings - I have a good feeling for this :) !
Thanks again for your time and effort you put in this post - your help is much appreciated !
As I said..cant wait to get home and test everything out..maybe tweak some Catalyst options.
Thanks one more time :) ! Good luck and see you in game!

Donnie Dr.Greenthumb Darko




FauconIoji said:
Okay, I'm about to pour a lot of information and things on you, so I apologize in advance for all the writing you're about to have to sift through.

Firstly: EU runs ineffectively mostly because of the engine it's on. MMOs running on a graphics engine like CryTek are still something that's hard to come by today. It was a major undertaking my MA and they're essentially pioneering the whole idea. That being said, it can be inferred that a big reason for the heavy load Entropia causes is the processing that your machine has to do to ensure that the nice graphics on your screen appropriately interface with the commands they're receiving over the internet. That's why most MMO's are still pretty blocky - and why other online games don't utilize an open world.

That being said,

Dual video cards can cause a lot of problems on games in general (and to be perfectly honest I hate the whole principle of using one card sometimes and another card for the big stuff, because the PC never gets it right).

Now, I'm not an expert on ATI graphics cards, so maybe someone else can help me on this one, but I know on nVidia cards, there is an option to always use the nVidia card for everything. That's what I did on my Asus ROG and it worked for me. However, if you're running the game on medium, you're most likely not running the game on the intel card, so I doubt that's the problem. To be sure, though, you could try hooking up an HDMI-capable monitor to your laptop and running the game on that. Typically HDMI ports are hardware-interfaced with the better card. So, try that, turn your laptop monitor off and see if you notice a difference. That should confirm the intel-ATI thing.

If you got the drivers from the ATI auto-updater, there still could be newer ones on the website that haven't been pushed down to everyone yet - I would encourage you to go check anyway for good measure :)

Finally, here's a little piece that a lot of troubleshooters miss: Make sure your power settings in windows are set to high performance - NOT Balanced or power saver. Many laptops dual-carding it underpower the bigger graphics card to save battery life and then never give it the power it needs. Changing your settings to high performance can seriously increase the effectiveness of mobile graphics processors. So, try that and see if that makes a difference. It's possible that the new drivers increased your card's effectiveness to interface with the laptop, and now it simply can't keep up because its being underpowered. Wouldn't be the first time I've seen that happen.

Last but not least, does ATI have a system that allows you to choose your secondary processor? If it does, make sure that you allow the system to "automatically select" your secondary processor, as this will give the card some flexibility to utilize the CPU for assistance with processing complex physics algorithms, etc and that's very useful for any game running the crytek engine.

Let me know how you make out on this - and if anyone else can chime in who has an ATI card with more specific instructions on the above mentioned suggestions, it would be helpful ^^
Click to expand...
 
Sell ur ATI on eBay and buy an Nvidia. Problem solved.
 
Donnie_Darko said:
Hello Entropians!
I hope someone can help me with this issue..
Today I updated my ATI Catalyst video drivers hoping that I can improve my gaming performance.
After video card update when I launch the game - starting from log in section my screen starts to flicker as it would have some frame rate issue, but I think that is not the case. When I switch to Windowed mode everything seams to be fine. I was wondering maybe someone has had the same issue and managed to fix it? - I have to add that with my old video drivers game was running just fine. Maybe I have to change some settings? How come full screen is flickering, but windowed mode is running just fine? Besides all the other games (Shadow of Mordor, BF3 and BF4 etc.) are running with no problems on medium/high settings..
Thank you for reading this post - I hope someone could give me some clue what to do - realy dont want to play in windowed mode or roll back to older drivers.

Thank you in advance
Donnie Dr.Greenthumb Darko
Click to expand...
Maybe that just screen tearing? Do you have V-sync enabled?
 
Sounds like you've 2 gfx cards that enter SLI/CF mode (only) when in fullscreen (normal).
 
aVaLON_52 said:
Sell ur ATI on eBay and buy an Nvidia. Problem solved.
Click to expand...

It's a laptop.

Luckycharm said:
Sounds like you've 2 gfx cards that enter SLI/CF mode (only) when in fullscreen (normal).
Click to expand...

Intel cards don't support SLI and SLI can typically only be done between two identical cards, and only then when they're both nVidia as SLI is an nVidia proprietary thing. Yes, I know, other companies have similar technology - but the technologies aren't universal. You can't cross platform SLI. Mobile gfx processors have a "low setting" card for everyday use and a "high setting" mobile discreet card for gaming. The only issue that can happen here is the system selecting the wrong card for the job. Which happens. A lot.
 
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