nvidia driver makes x flicker at random times

[hope22]

This is my first posting so I suppose it will show. Please, bear with me and give me a hand.

I have been using the nvidia driver for about a couple of months. Everything seems to work fine except that the screen flickers at times. It usually happens when I move the mouse someplace or I use the wheel for scrolling or minimize/maximize a window.

There is no flickering when using the vesa driver. But there are huge disadvantages to using this driver. For starters, I can't get it to work with a 1280x800 resolution on my P15 toshiba laptop. The graphics card is an NVIDIA® GeForce™ FX Go5100.

The nv driver is not good either. This one really is unstable for me. It makes X crash, etc.

Incidentally, let me mention that I have not seen the screen flicker since I started composing this message. Sometimes it goes a long time without doing anything, but if I start moving windows around, it does not take long for the flickering to occur.

By the way, I do not have the most recent version of the driver right now. I changed to the version I have right now after using the new version for about a month. The new version and the old version present the same problem to me. Random flickering.

Thanks to anyone that can help. I would also like to know whether I am the only one with this issue.

Oh well, I just saw one of those "nice" flickering instances. This time it just happenend because I moved the mouse.

[uberpenguin]

I have the exact same problem; this has only started happening with the latest revision of the drivers. Then again, for me the nv driver works flawlessly, but it sucks a lot not to have any 2d or 3d acceleration (if the nv driver DOES have 2d acceleration, it's not very good)

-uberpenguin

[hope22]

Thanks uberpenguin. I have not been able to get the nv drivers to works well with my machine. The system would freeze if I decided to go to a console from X, or if I exited X then startx would not work. Could you post your XF86Config-4 to this thread so that I can give that a try?

[devotional]

Seeing the same problem here with Dell Inspiron 8600 and Nvidia Go5650 and driver version 5336. I am using the Gentoo distribution.

I might be hallucinating, but it looks like it might be some text being shown during the flickering (subliminal advertising? buy nvidia, buy nvidia... ;o).

[the_eternal]

I have the exact same problem. But i never noticed it while playing a 3d game, so that's quite weird... so it's probably x11 related.

[TheUnabeefer]

okay... I have this problem too. I have been resorting to using the classic "nv" for a while........... Now that we know other people HAVE this problem, does anyone actually know how to fix it?!

[squarooticus]

I had this problem until I turned off the hardware cursor:

Section "Device"
.
.
.
Option "HWCursor" "0"
Option "SWCursor" "1"

Let me know how this works out for you guys.

Cheers,
Kyle

[TheUnabeefer]

tried both that and using "off" and "on" (as suggested in the gentoo forums) ..... neither worked. It flickers as if my power is about to go out.... that's the only thing it is similar to. horizontal flashes across my screen in random spots......... once in a while the entire screen flashes. (all only for, like, milliseconds at a time) **shrug** still using "nv" for now.

[pte]

I have the same problem, although only at resolutions higher then 1024x786. Has someone else tested different resolutions?

pieter

[TheUnabeefer]

tried both 1024x768 and 1280x1024.... both flicker like crazy.

A friend of mine insists that it is simply because I am using a 2.6 kernel instead of his favourite 2.4

still using "nv" =O)

[TheUnabeefer]

ok, never mind. Je suis idiot. Apparently my RAMDAC went haywire and all I had to do was get a new video card. now it works just fine.

[dal553]

I'm seeing the same issues with a Dell D800 with the 5650 card. I am currently running with the cursor options implemented as mentioned above and they seem to be working for the most part. I just played BZ a bit and saw the same flickering in there, but while running just the desktop, I appear to be OK. Does nVidia have any word on when this problem will be fixed?