Anything else worth trying to fix my xv340ckp ?

Diefenbaker

Hello,

My Acer XV340ckp is randomly blinking/flickering. Every so often the screen 'blinks' and there is a quick flash of a stripe running horizontally across the screen approximately three inches from the top of the screen. This could happen every few minutes to once every 20 mins or so. There is no noticeable pattern to the frequency of it occurring.

Occasionally the screen also seems to go dark for a second. As if the brightness has been turned almost all the way down momentarily. This seems to be rarer and maybe happens once a day.

I am currently running the screen at 144hz on a windows 10 machine powered by an i7700k and a 3080 gpu. So far I have attempted to solve the issue by trying an alternate display port cable and alternate display port port; uninstalling all my display drivers and reinstalling them; ensuring I have the latest display driver from the Acer site and the latest 3080 drivers.

I have noticed the issue does not seem to occur when the screen refresh rate is 60hz or lower. I have also noticed it most frequently happens when I am browsing the internet and have youtube in one window and a normal text/image based website in another. However I can play modern pc games at a high refresh rate without issue. I have also tried tweaking some of the settings in the OSD. i.e. overdrive on/off, gamma, contrast etc without success.

I plan to try the screen on an entirely different machine within the next day or two. After that I am out of ideas. I would be grateful if anyone could give me any suggestions as to how to stop the flickering.

Thank you

billsey

I'd say from your description it's more likely to be a driver issue than hardware, but let's try to pin it down a bit more. Glitches like that can often be caused by a cable that's not quite up to snuff. Are the two cables you have tried both from the same manufacturer? You might be running the equivalent of a DP 1.2 cable on the DP 1.4 signal, for instance. You say the symptom seems to show up most often when you are using a combination of a browser showing a web site and another running YouTube, can you try using different browsers? If we can pin it down to a specific set of circumstances it is liable to be much easier to solve.

Easwar

Hi @Diefenbaker,

What cable are you using HDMI or VGA cable ?

Diefenbaker

Easwar said:

Hi @Diefenbaker,

What cable are you using HDMI or VGA cable ?

Hi Easwar, I am using the display port cable that came with the monitor. To rule this out as being the issue I have tried another display port cable. The same one seen in this Amazon link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0834W7F7X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1 .  

Diefenbaker

billsey said:

I'd say from your description it's more likely to be a driver issue than hardware, but let's try to pin it down a bit more. Glitches like that can often be caused by a cable that's not quite up to snuff. Are the two cables you have tried both from the same manufacturer? You might be running the equivalent of a DP 1.2 cable on the DP 1.4 signal, for instance. You say the symptom seems to show up most often when you are using a combination of a browser showing a web site and another running YouTube, can you try using different browsers? If we can pin it down to a specific set of circumstances it is liable to be much easier to solve.

Evening Billsey, I think you may be onto something. Earlier today I connected my monitor up to another PC. This pc is running an intel 10400f cpu with an AMD rx480 gpu. I have managed to browse the web on it for 2 x1 hour sessions and played games on it for 1.5 hours without issue. 

The current display port cable is one I linked to in the above post. Its a display port 1.2 cable by Jsaux. But originally I was using the cable provided with the screen. 

From here on out I will refer to the pc I am having issues on as the 'Nvidia pc' and the one that is behaving as the 'AMD pc'. 

As per my original post the Nvidia PC has the latest Nvidia 3080 drivers on it; the ACER widget app and the latest recommended Acer display driver. 

The AMD pc has the latest drivers for the RX480 gpu, the generic windows installed PnP monitor driver and does not have the Acer Widget. 

Both machines are running up to date versions of Windows 10. 

I will poke around the options on the NVidia machine some more to see if I can identify whether the signal coming from the 3080 is incorrect in some way or not suitable. In the mean time if you have any further suggestions I am all ears. 

I am happy to provide screenshots/further details if you need them. 

billsey

So the two cables are different enough that we can likely rule out cable created issues, so not in that portion of the hardware at least.

Are both machines sending to the same monitor resolution and frequency? If the good one is doing 1440P at 120Hz and the bad one at 144Hz we'd want to try and align them both to the same frequency to give us an apples to apples comparison. Next is to coordinate the apps in use, if one is using Edge and the other Chrome we'd want to sync them to the same browser, check the browser version as well. Finally we want both the NVIDIA and AMD to be using whatever is the latest drivers, since we can't really sync the hardware we can at least get them to near similar levels.

Diefenbaker

After a few hours experimenting I think the blame lies with a driver. Probably the GPU driver. 
Here is a clip of what is happening to the screen (not my clip but one I found online). 

I spent some time doing a fresh install of windows on a spare SSD and managed to spend 2 hours browsing the web on it without issue. 
So I suspect something is interfering with the display drivers even though I have used DDU to uninstall them and start fresh. 

When I get more time I will backup my files and wipe my SSDs to do a fresh install of windows. 

billsey

Before getting into a full reinstall, try doing a full removal of the NVIDIA drivers, including removing their files. Reboot and verify the display adapter has been reset to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter default. Install the latest GPU drivers from NVIDIA and reboot again when complete, then retest. If the issue is just a corrupted driver or driver configuration that should deal with it...

Diefenbaker

billsey said:

Before getting into a full reinstall, try doing a full removal of the NVIDIA drivers, including removing their files. Reboot and verify the display adapter has been reset to the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter default. Install the latest GPU drivers from NVIDIA and reboot again when complete, then retest. If the issue is just a corrupted driver or driver configuration that should deal with it...

Hi Bill, I tried that in my original post. DDU is Display Driver Uninstaller tool. Ran in safe mode it removes all traces of NVidia drivers and folder etc for a completely clean install. 
Admittedly that has thrown me. Id expect if it was a driver issue for that to resolve it. Maybe I didnt give it long enough on the clean install of windows to happen. 

Diefenbaker

Just to update this post. I havent rebuilt windows yet as I need to back everything up first and take the time to do a clean install. I was planning to do this over xmas holidays. 
I have noticed however that the issue is non-existent if I remove my second screen. I could have sworn I tried removing the second screen and the issue was occurring but maybe I didn't. 

Either way I now suspect the issue is linked to using 2 screens. Admitedly the second screen is a 27inch 1080p 60hz monitor. Maybe the gpu doesnt like putting out 2x different refresh rates at different resolutions (?). 

I'll continue to monitor (pun intended) and make a decision on how to proceed later down the line. 
The only problem I have noticed since switching to single screen use is that twice the monitor has powered up and the right half of the screen has been a big colourful mess. A quick power off of the monitor and back on again gets it working 100% again. Is this a sign of anything troublesome ? 

Its the same issue seen here: https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/620560/acer-nitro-xv340ckp-34-inch-uwqhd-ultrawide-gaming-monitor-half-screen-problem

In this thread the user rma'd his monitor but I have seen other forums online where people describe it happening so infrequently they just live with it and power cycle the monitor if it does happen. 

billsey

Yeah, I run three screens on my 1070 with three different resolutions, but all at the same refresh rate. The symptom of half the screen being garbled sounds more like the GPU than the screen, but who knows... I'd monitor that and try to see if there's a specific state that causes it. I don't think there's any feature in the monitor that would do a split screen from two inputs.

flirre

Hi!

I just wanted to say that I have same problem on my setup.

I have my Nvidia Desktop with a 3070 and a 5800x and I am running both Windows 10 and Linux.

I have a 24" 1080p 60Hz monitor on the side as well as my Acer XV340ckp that started flickering about a month or two ago.

The flickering on my screen seems to match what you describe in your post as well.
"Every so often the screen 'blinks' and there is a quick flash of a stripe running horizontally across the screen approximately three inches from the top of the screen. This could happen every few minutes to once every 20 mins or so. There is no noticeable pattern to the frequency of it occurring."

It worked fine for several months until recently I started having this problem when having 144Hz (anything over 60Hz really) on the Acer monitor.

If it is set to 60Hz the problem seems to go away, and the same goes for when my work-macbook is used with the same setup. But the Macbook only takes 60Hz so it is no surprise that there is no problem there.

Diefenbaker

Hi all, just an update on where mine is. For a really long time I just left the screen on 60Hz as I was playing sim games (MSFS) that struggled to even get 60fps. Over the last 2 months Ive recently started playing Warzone again and so turned the screen refresh rate back up to 144Hz. I havent noticed the top of the screen flicker since doing so but every so often when booting up my system the right half of the Acer monitor will be black/garbled. In this situation I simply turn off the monitor and turn it back on.

I suspect an Nvidia driver .delivered over the last year has sorted the flickering issue. For now I will live with having to occasionally restart the screen.