Blur Busters Forums

Hi all, so I’ve recently purchased a ROG SWIFT PG258Q Monitor and I can notice a slight flicker sometimes while doing non-gaming related things. (Browsing forums, using photoshop, even staring at my desktop background with nothing else open).

The flicker is kind of difficult to describe, it’s extremely subtle but once I started noticing it, it’s been driving me crazy. The flicker is like an extremely quick white flash. The flicker only lasts a few milliseconds and it almost looks like an extremely fast strobe flash. Sort of like the brightness of my monitor spikes for just a few milliseconds then goes back to normal. These flickers happen at seemingly random intervals, sometimes I won’t notice one for 20 minutes. Sometimes I’ll notice 2 or 3 in a row.

The weird part is, this flicker doesn’t exist while I’m gaming. (Or at least I’m not able to notice it). Does anyone have any idea what would cause this, or is this something normal with high refresh rate monitors or something? This is my first high end gaming monitor, prior to this I was using a 60 Hz Benq and never noticed the sort of flicker I’m talking about.

If it matters my setup uses 3 monitors. Monitor 1 is my PG258Q at 240hz connected to GPU via displayport. Monitor 2 is an older Dell 1680x1050 60hz monitor connected to GPU via DVI to displayport adapter. Monitor 3 is a 1920x1080 BenQ 60hz monitor connected to GPU via DVI to displayport adapter.

A few basic things I’ve tried that have not helped.
-Turned Off Gsync
-Turned On Gsync
-Purchase a new Display Port Cable
-Tried a different port on my GPU (2080 TI)

If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them. Could this be a problem with the monitor itself?

No, it's not normal. Something is wrong here. Could be sync issues with the other monitors. As a test, try and go a whole day without any other monitor connected. Disconnect the other monitors and reboot.

If that fixes the issue, then it's most probably a driver bug, and there's not much you can do about it. If it doesn't fix the issue, it could be a monitor defect and cause for RMA.

RealNC wrote:No, it's not normal. Something is wrong here. Could be sync issues with the other monitors. As a test, try and go a whole day without any other monitor connected. Disconnect the other monitors and reboot.

If that fixes the issue, then it's most probably a driver bug, and there's not much you can do about it. If it doesn't fix the issue, it could be a monitor defect and cause for RMA.

Hmm, interesting. Do you know if it's common for multi-monitor setups with varying refresh rates to cause problems like that? In any case, I'll give that a shot. If the PG258Q still has the flicker with the other monitor's not connected, I suppose I'd have to look into asus's warranty service,ugh. Thanks for the response.

I've seen people report all sorts of problems with multiple displays, especially if they're not exactly the same monitors.

That is not normal. Does it happen when you run the monitor in 240hz mode? (You may have to disconnect the other monitor for this. It reminds me of the frc/inversion pattern flicker you can get sometimes with low framerate gsync. That often looks like a slight brightness flicker.

It could even be a malfunctioning backlight controller.

This problem will be a very difficult one to diagnose....

open wrote:That is not normal. Does it happen when you run the monitor in 240hz mode? (You may have to disconnect the other monitor for this. It reminds me of the frc/inversion pattern flicker you can get sometimes with low framerate gsync. That often looks like a slight brightness flicker.

Yes, it does happen at 240hz. I tried removing the other 2 monitors and just using the PG258Q and the flicker is still there. I also tried setting the monitor's refresh rate to 60hz to see if that would do anything, the flicker is still there. The way you describe it sounds right though, it looks like a brightness flicker.

At this point I think I'm just gonna RMA the monitor. Kinda sucks, I've heard nothing but bad things about ASUS warranty services.

Chief Blur Buster wrote:It could even be a malfunctioning backlight controller.

This problem will be a very difficult one to diagnose....

Yeah, as I mentioned above, I guess I'll just have to RMA it

Thanks for the response though.