Question Alienware M17 R5 AMD Laptop Small Flashing Black Dots

[Ishraq Zaman]

My Alienware M17 R5 AMD laptop shows flashing black dots on the bottom of the screen. This only appears when I use Optimus mode and set the refresh rate to 165HZ. If I use Nvidia GPU-only mode or set the refresh rate to 60hz, they don't appear anymore.

Laptop Specs:
CPU- R7 6800H

GPU -3070Ti

I did a clean reinstall of the AMD graphics driver using DDU but it didn't help.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Check to see if your laptop has any BIOS updates pending. To add, does the issue crop up on an external monitor with the same resolution and refresh rate?

CPU- R7 6800H
GPU -3070Ti
I did a clean reinstall of the AMD graphics driver using DDU but it didn't help.
You're working with an APU(iGPU on the CPU) as well as discrete GPU. You're advised to run DDU in Safe Mode to remove all GPU drivers(Intel, AMD and Nvidia) then manually reinstall the latest GPU driver sourced from Nvidia's support site in an elevated command, i.e, Right click installer>Run as Administrator.

 

[Ishraq Zaman]

Hi, thanks for your reply.
The Bios is the latest version I installed a few days ago from the Dell website. I have an external monitor with a resolution of 2560X1080 and a refresh rate 60Hz, and the issue doesn't appear there. These black dots only appear when I'm using the optimum mode or have my 2nd monitor connected and set the refresh rate of my laptop display higher than 60Hz; the display has a couple of variable refresh rates; please see the attached image and the black dots only appear when the refresh rate is set any higher than 60hz.

I used Ryzen Controller to limit TDP to 40W a few days ago, but after these black dots started happening, I reset to defaults and removed the program. Could that have caused it?