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Has anyone NOT had flickering and/or pixelation on the G501JW?

aldel
Level 7
I'm wondering how common these problems are. I would still have time to exchange mine for a replacement from the seller, if I believed that only certain units were affected.

Also wondering if anyone has found a RELIABLE way to reproduce the problem, when it exists.

I suspect it's a hardware problem. A lot of people seem to think it can be solved by installing the right drivers, but since the problem is so intermittent, it's possible that they have just not happened to see the problem since they changed the drivers.

I also don't know of a good explanation for how drivers could cause the problems I'm seeing. Especially the flicker. And why, if it's a software problem, does it gradually go away as the machine warms up?

Here are the symptoms I see. Occasionally, after waking up from sleep (not sure if it has to be the "deep sleep" mode that it uses when not plugged in to AC), I see one or both of these problems:


  • The screen flickers like a fast strobe light. It's a bit like a fluorescent light, but it's a stronger effect than you get with a good, modern fluorescent bulb. It's NOT like a really bad fluorescent light that goes dark for half a second at a time; it's a constant, very fast flicker. Sometimes it's really bad, and sometimes it's subtle.
  • Colors other than black or white take on a very fine, grid-like pattern, which some people have described as "pixelated". The first thing I thought of was that the GPU was dithering half-tones, like it would in a 256-color mode to show colors that weren't in its gamut. These colors also come out too light; some people have described them as "washed out".


Sometimes I get one problem, sometimes the other, and sometimes both.

Both of these problems fade out gradually after waking the computer up. It can take up to an hour for the flicker to go away. When the flicker is very strong, it's almost physically painful to look at the screen.

Here is a video of what it looks like when both problems occur simultaneously. This is a timelapse video, compressing 1 hour and 13 minutes down to 1 minute and 13 seconds. The camera was aimed at a solid gray part of the screen.

The waves that you see traveling up the screen are a result of the rolling shutter on my camera; that's not really what it looks like in real life. But without the strobe effect on the screen, you wouldn't see the waves. You can see that they have basically stopped by the end.

The grid effect is clearly visible if you watch in 1080P. This effect fades out relatively rapidly. The gray stays too light for a while; by the end, when it was at its correct brightness level, it's darker.

I haven't seen the pixelation in a couple days now (since I did a "refresh Windows" and reinstalled the drivers again), and the strobe effect, when I've seen it, was pretty subtle (could have just been the backlight still warming up). But I also went several days with no problems last week, and then it happened again. This is why I'm not convinced that changing drivers actually fixes the problem.

I'm really frustrated by the amount of time I've spent trying to fix this. Due to lost productivity, I arguably would have saved money by buying a high-end Macbook Pro or Dell XPS for $800 more.
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42 REPLIES 42

[glitch]

I tried to make an Ubuntu 15.04 Live USB, but it seems to boot to solid black. I assume that Ubuntu just doesn't have all the necessary drivers. I was curious to mess with the PWM settings. But since I don't actually plan on using Linux, I don't think I will debug that.

Went ahead and forced the install of the latest Intel drivers. 5/22/2015 driver date.

I guess the old ones could have crappy power management code that bugs things out...

spindrift
Level 7
Hm. I Plan to dual boot to linux for work.
This is all just too many problems.
I'm still inside my refund window, so I'm bailing out.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
Sadness. :(. I like pretty much everything about the machine but the screens painful flicker when waking up from shallow sleep. It's really painful when it happens.

I don't think I have it as bad as you with the graphical glitches gaming. I don't see any of those at all on power or otherwise.

I'm gonna keep the experiment running a few more days and see if it's just that everyone else is taking latest non ASUS drivers and the problem is fixed there.

spindrift
Level 7
I'll try to post a video of the flickering for reference before i return it.
It's a real shame, this notebook looked line the perfect notebook on paper.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
FYI, I managed to get debian-live to boot. Their image doesn't support UEFI boot, so I had to turn off Secure Boot and turn on CSM. Many tries with the Ubuntu LiveUSB failed, potentially because it doesn't really work with UEFI boot.

No repro of the flicker on resume from soft power so far this weekend using the AC at home. 50% time on newest ASUS Intel Driver. 50% on newest one direct from Intel.

I had tried to record the flickering I did see before with 240fps mode on iPhone 6, but it wasn't showing up in video (moire effects / sampling etc). Hope you can capture yours.

kolina
Level 7
It's a shame that there aren't any official responses from Asus regarding this problem. I've contacted their support and "they're looking into it" after that I haven't heard from them. A lousy machine and ever worse support. At least I haven't written my review yet for the vendor.

spindrift
Level 7
Here's a video demonstrating the flickering while running borderlands 2

nomad_gamer
Level 7
Watching to see if anyone has figured out a solution. Probably going to return this laptop soon because of this issue. It's pretty bad.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
Okay, so I don't have those kind of graphical glitches (dead lines or total black frames). I am curious if you see those on an external monitor. If it does, it would indicate that its something wrong with the panel, otherwise there is a GPU or panel connection problem.

I finally got a reproduction of the painful flickering of the backlight.

The steps are
1. Run the laptop on battery for awhile (Just let it go down to 45%)
2. Plugin the laptop
3. Let the screen go to sleep
4. Wake the computer back up.

At this point the backlight is pulsating. 😞

So it seems that something is messed up in the power system when the laptop is charging..