TLDR: My older HP laptop (Nvidia gpu and Win10) flickers no matter what driver and with both the 630M and 650M gpu. I installed gpu-z (techpowerup) and the flicker stopped as long as gpu-z is running. Why?
My older HP laptop dv6t flickers badly and constantly until the screen freezes. I have a dedicated gpu and the flicker only happens when the Nvidia gpu is enabled. This problem has been well known since 2014 when the Win10 upgrade first rolled out - the solution for most was to rollback to Win8 https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-Yoga-Series-Notebooks/yoga-3-pro-screen-wont-stop-flickering-since-installing-windows/td-p/2133060 (the flicker problem does not seem to have affected the AMD gpu). See here for a typical example https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_update/windows-10-tp-9879-constantly-flickering-after/4cd9f278-f504-4e29-ba2b-b3a001e5f462
Lots of good articles
- The Flicker lives on as shown by this 2017 Drive the Life article http://www.drivethelife.com/windows-10/fix-screen-flickering-flashing-after-windows-10-upgrade.html
- The official word from 2016 Microsoft Support https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12374/windows-10-troubleshoot-screen-flickering
- WCCF tech article from 2015 believes in drivers http://wccftech.com/fix-windows-10-nvidia-driver-conflicts/
- Short Reddit thread from 2015, this user found that turning on mouse trails fixed the flicker https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/3izuz3/flickering_issues_on_win10_with_4k_displays_with/?st=j0plumng&sh=68a72bdb
The assumption back over the years 2014-17 has been that the flicker will be resolved through the Nvidia driver update https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/859279/windows-10-353-54-flickering-issues/ I tried numerous drivers from as far back as 2014 and up to the release earlier this month (fairly certain I installed the drivers correctly). There are some posts that say installing Win8 and then updating to Win10 and then rolling back the Nvidia drivers solves the flicker. I cannot find where I read this - but, I initially had upgraded to Win10 from Win8 (or 8.1) and never had a flicker problem. I bought a new SSD and did a fresh Win10 install and found the flicker.
After three years it looks like it is not a driver issue since it would have been fixed by now. Is it something incompatible between Win 10 and the older Nvidia gpu?
I had a 630M (2010 Fermi GF117) in my laptop and it flickered. I changed to a 650M (2012 Kepler GK107) motherboard and it flickers too. Does it affect the 2014 Maxwell (I searched and did not find much about Maxwell flicker but most people don't post their gpu architecture)? Presumably the 2016 Pascal is fine. It says here that Win10 supports Kepler and newer (maybe supports Fermi) https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/862424/geforce-drivers/windows-10-faq-and-driver-installation-tips-/ Which means the flicker problem should not be due to hardware. But, it must be somewhat hardware since the newer Pascal does not flicker.
I thought maybe the gpu was overheating due to some driver/os issue (it wasn't).
I also considered it could be an energy saving (rapid off/on created feedback) flicker issue; so I tried high performance settings. No luck.
To see what the temps are I installed gpu-z (techpowerup) and set the gpu-z to start on startup. The flicker stopped... At login it flickers like mad, but, as soon as the password is typed and enter pressed, it stops. It runs for days with zero flicker.
My intuition is that the gpu-z temp sampling keeps the gpu in a constant 'on' state and this stops the flicker (meaning it is win10 energy optimization related).
Please explain this like I am five.
