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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

daff__
Level 7
I have only been using mine for a day, and only played one game (Guild Wars 2), but i have no flickering.
I think it looked awful and pixelated in Windows in some programs and popup dialogues, kind of when you have no videodrivers installed and it drove me mad! But after some googling i found out that its some sh*t with Windows 8 and DPI scaling, so i changed the DPI scaling in Control Panel and display settings to "small" instead of "medium" and relogged, and that fixed the problem!

dienow
Level 7
never had any of this problem on G501J , expect windows 8 bug , that 100% hdd. hell .
i hope windows 10 update will fix it , its getting annoying just selecting song track on itunes and freeze like hell with high ms.

Gloryhol3
Level 7
So i have had mine since last Friday, and got some flickering issues on the first day. Did some tweaking and uninstalled, and then reinstalled, both the drivers. This fixed it only temporarily, but the issue returned after maybe a day.
A friend suggested that it could be the system switching between integrated and discrete graphics drivers that is causing the flickering. I uninstalled the Intel HD graphics driver and did NOT reinstall it. I am now running on discrete only. I did that on Saturday night and have NOT had any screen flickering issues. Granted it has only been a few days and I know that other people say they "fixed" their flickering issues, only to have it return as long as a week later. I am hopeful that this is a "fix", as it does not seem like Asus is taking this very seriously. I will update if it returns.
The only problem with running discrete graphics only is that my battery life estimates are shot by between 1 to 2 hours... which is pretty significant. Before I uninstalled the intel driver it was estimating around 6 hours on batter.. now I have only ever gotten about 4 hours estimation. This is a pretty big drop, in my opinion, and I think may warrant using the 30 day return window as that is kind of robbery if you ask me. If you guys know of a way to increase battery life (on power saver mode) without Intel drivers installed do let me know. Perhaps there are settings that are not being adjusted to increase battery that I have not looked into.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
FWIW, I only see backlight intensity flickering issues, not black lines or missing frames like spindrift. I updated all my video drivers to the ones direct from GPU manufacturer (Intel, NVIDIA). The issue was still occurring occasionally after allowing the laptop to turn off the screen while actively charging. I modified the power settings to never put the screen to sleep while charging and turned on a screen saver. I haven't seen it happen with a painful level of flickering since, it was typically happening when leaving the office for lunch etc. I did once see some minor flickering operating on battery only. It seems to me to be a power electronics issue in the displays lamp controller that can be encouraged by software actions. Now on windows 10... We'll see how another week goes.

serialgign
Level 7
Never had this problem but ASUS released a new bios: https://www.asus.com/support/Download/3/768/0/1/uv3gzPnU54cTZC6Y/45/

"Fixed eDP Panel Power Sequence not correct after S3 resume, Panel will abnormal after wake up0 from panel-off."

Can anyone verify if that ^ latest update fixed the flickering issue?

dienow
Level 7
better u try tu update it rather than wait for any ppl to update.

i just updated it and nothing happens just usual , my G501 is normal so far and im using windows 10.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
Change log sounds extremely promising. The issue would be tied to sleep states from my observations. I will give it a go.

wrldsuksgo2mars
Level 7
Reset all of the power settings to normal. Haven't seen any flickering after sleep since the BIOS update. AWESOME!

kolina
Level 7
Tried all the bioses and all graphic setting one by one, didn't help. Save your nerves and propably money and go with a different laptop and/or a brand.