Screen Constantly Flickering

[Josh77]

Hello all.

I've run into this puzzling issue with this somewhat older system I've been putting together. My issue is that After installing this Geforce GTX 520, the screen is constantly flickering beginning at the very first flash screen, bios, and in windows. Thinking it was an issue with the video card, I tried this card in 2 other systems and it works perfectly fine. I have toggled every possible setting in bios in hopes this would resolve it and nothing. My system specs are as follows:

Intel D945GNT MB
Pentium 3.0 Processor
8GB DDR3
Geforce GTX 520 PCI-E 1GB
Windows 7 32 bit

Ive updated and flashed bios, verified up to date chipset drivers, and tried different hard drives, a dozen different memory chips, fresh installs of windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Interestingly enough, after having updated the Nvidia drivers, the system wont even boot after the windows splash screen and the screen remains black. I have the onboard video disabled and have tried the vga port anyway just to see if it was still enabled and nothing. I can boot into safe mode to remove the driver, but of course everything is still flickering in safe mode as well. I cant get to any setting to change or view the refresh rates.

Thinking it was possibly the motherboard, I've tried other PCI-E cards on this MB and they work fine. Ive actually tried this gtx 520 card on 3 other similar Motherboards with different versions of BIOS and im getting the screen flickering on 2 of them, and the 3rd older board I am trying to upgrade from seems to work fine. I've called Nvidia but of course they say if the card works on other systems, its not the card. Perhaps there is just a compatibility issue with some of these older Intel boards with the GTX 520? Any help anyone has on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

-Josh

 

[napster100]

Hello all.

I've run into this puzzling issue with this somewhat older system I've been putting together. My issue is that After installing this Geforce GTX 520, the screen is constantly flickering beginning at the very first flash screen, bios, and in windows. Thinking it was an issue with the video card, I tried this card in 2 other systems and it works perfectly fine. I have toggled every possible setting in bios in hopes this would resolve it and nothing. My system specs are as follows:

Intel D945GNT MB
Pentium 3.0 Processor
8GB DDR3
Geforce GTX 520 PCI-E 1GB
Windows 7 32 bit

Ive updated and flashed bios, verified up to date chipset drivers, and tried different hard drives, a dozen different memory chips, fresh installs of windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

Interestingly enough, after having updated the Nvidia drivers, the system wont even boot after the windows splash screen and the screen remains black. I have the onboard video disabled and have tried the vga port anyway just to see if it was still enabled and nothing. I can boot into safe mode to remove the driver, but of course everything is still flickering in safe mode as well. I cant get to any setting to change or view the refresh rates.

Thinking it was possibly the motherboard, I've tried other PCI-E cards on this MB and they work fine. Ive actually tried this gtx 520 card on 3 other similar Motherboards with different versions of BIOS and im getting the screen flickering on 2 of them, and the 3rd older board I am trying to upgrade from seems to work fine. I've called Nvidia but of course they say if the card works on other systems, its not the card. Perhaps there is just a compatibility issue with some of these older Intel boards with the GTX 520? Any help anyone has on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

-Josh

It may likely be compatibility. Though, have you tried different monitors or refresh rates? Maybe the monitor refresh rate is lower than 60Hz? Or the GPU driver might be pushing more than 60Hz which in all my experiences definitely cause screen flicker.

My advice is if you can boot to the desktop, open the Nvidia control panel and follow this overclocking tutorial, but instead of overclocking the refresh rate, try underclocking it. i.e. if its above 60Hz, set the first custom profile to 60Hz at your desired resolution (preferably the monitors resolution). If that doesn't fix it, try reducing it down a bit more to say 50Hz. If its a dying monitor, then this might be quite helpless. I guess you could still give it a shot though.

 

[Josh77]

Thank you for your response. I have tried multiple monitors and the flickering still occurs on all of them.

I did clone my old xp system that already had the gtx 520 drivers on it, and placed that hd in there and it was still flickering during bios and the window xp splash screen, but after a couple of reboots, the driver fixed the issue, but only after widows boots (Still flickers before windows bootup) Not that it's a huge problem, but I do find that strange, and I am trying to get away from XP. I'm sure I could do some digging around for an older windows 7 nvidia driver that might resolve it, but I expect to have it still flickering before bootup.

I did read there is the possibility of updating the bios on the video card itself. Has anyone had any experience in this? Thanks again

 

[napster100]

Thank you for your response. I have tried multiple monitors and the flickering still occurs on all of them.

I did clone my old xp system that already had the gtx 520 drivers on it, and placed that hd in there and it was still flickering during bios and the window xp splash screen, but after a couple of reboots, the driver fixed the issue, but only after widows boots (Still flickers before windows bootup) Not that it's a huge problem, but I do find that strange, and I am trying to get away from XP. I'm sure I could do some digging around for an older windows 7 Nvidiadriver that might resolve it, but I expect to have it still flickering before bootup.

I did read there is the possibility of updating the bios on the video card itself. Has anyone had any experience in this? Thanks again

I was doing just that yesterday! For a different reason, but I find it a rather simple process. You'll need to find the GPU's official BIOS somewhere (I'm sure it'll be around) and then you disable your driver (no need to uninstall, just disable) run a command line program called NVflash passing the parameters to it, it will then ask you to confirm and then flashes the BIOS, after just re-enable the driver and reboot.

I'm currently having problems where the driver doesn't recognise the GPU but that's likely because I'm modifying it (which is always risky business), I still get video output though. If I flash my original BIOS back to the card, it runs fine so you likely won't come across a problem as long as that BIOS is meant for that card.

 

[napster100]

Flashing the GPUs BIOS is quite risky as a whole being honest though. If something goes wrong, you'll have a lot more trouble on your hands. Some have said to make a bootable USB containing DOS, your original BIOS with and a batch file that will autoflash it with NVflash in case something goes wrong. While I haven't done this, its probably a good idea if you don't have onboard video!

Anyway, a list of BIOSes for your card can be found here. And the flashing utility is here. You'll also want to get GPU-Z here and dump your original BIOS in case you do get problems.


This tutorial will help you flash the new BIOS from within Windows.

And this tutorial will help you dump your original BIOS and create a a bootable USB in case something goes wrong. You should do this before flashing! You can also skip steps 2 and 3 since these are about modifying the BIOS. Skip step 5 and use the tutorial above if you want the ease of flashing within Windows, else carry on with step 5!