Not a big deal, but does anybody else's screen flash on/off?

Hey guys,

Like I said, it's really not a major issue, but I'm just curious if anybody else has this problem. When the battery on my W3V starts to get moderately low (around 1 hour or less remaining), the screen will occasionally flash black for a split second, then return to the same brightness it was at previously. It's similar to when you unplug or plug in the the computer, but I'm not unplugging it or anything. I'll just be working on it and *poof* it turns black for an instant.

Well?

-Brian

 

Its probably from the video card changing clock speed.

In the ATI settings, theres a "Powerplay" tab where you can change battery life vs video performance which is triggered by the remaining battery level. When the battery goes below a certain point, the video card will underclock automatically (theres 3 different levels, and I think by default it will always underclock unless its on AC power. Then underclocks more when under a certain % of battery life.)

 

^^ Ohhhh....that makes sense.

Thanks!

 

Hmmm, I've never heard of this before...my screen doesn't do anything when I manually change clock speeds, nor did it do so when I used Powerplay...maybe try installing the latest ATI drivers?

 

Naaa..I've been updating the driver. This has happened since I got the machine, and is still occuring after the most recent update.

 

Hmmm...

I was gonna say something like a loose connection, does it turn off, or does it dim?

 

Ya know how you can turn off the backlight with one of the function keys and you can still see what's on the screen, but there's no actual light? It's like that, for a split second.

 

Out of all the W3's we have gotten, we only had 1 that did that, and we sent it back to Asus.

 

Funny. Mine flashes for less than a split second. If you blink during it, you miss it. Seems like it's not a big deal. I have an m5n. I think it happens both on battery and on ac power. ah well.

 

it should be a hardware issue. i had the same problem in my 17" LCD monitor before, it flash, on and off after 15min, then it was done by RMA. After they fixed, the problem is gone. might be some loose connection make it happen!!!!

 

Great, so I guess it might be time to contact Asus, huh? Well, if it really starts to bother me.

 

Does it only do this once as your battery is used up? and always at the same %? I really doubt its a hardware problem or anything to return.

Are you sure its not PowerPlay? When I change powerplay settings, it always does this.

right click desktop, properties, settings, advanced, Powerplay tab, click PowerPlay Settings. When plugged into AC power, change the first slider and apply it. The screen will flicker as the clock speed of the GPU changes.

 

Well, it only happens as the battery is getting low, maybe between 1/3 and 1/4 life. I removed Power4Gear, if that's what you mean. I do have CHC on there, but I have it set to maximum battery, so the computer runs at 800Mhz no matter how low the battery meter is.

 

Its not power4gear, but possibly "powerplay" which is part of the ATI drivers / software. Its like power4gear, but for the ATI chip speed, not the cpu speed, LCD brightness etc.

Just as the CPU can change speeds, so can the GPU.

If you go to the powerplay settings you should be able to tell easily if thats what is causing it.

right click on the desktop, click properties, settings tab (where you change resolution), advanced button, Powerplay tab, click PowerPlay Settings button. See if adjusting these settings and applying it makes the screen flicker the same way. You can set the GPU to underclock when the battery goes below a certain level. Or you can just disable powerplay and the GPU will always run full speed, but battery will be used a bit faster (a must for playing games on battery power).

 

Hey RobotMule-

Thanks. The PowerPlay thing is turned on, and set to adjust to "max battery" at 25% battery power, so I guess that's about when it happens. I'll deal with it now that I know what the computer is actually doing. Actually, I raised it up to about 35% to maybe get some better batt. life.

Thanks!