EVGA GTX 295 flickering problem solved

[Commando]

I really wanted to share this because it cost me, oh about, 2 months and a ton of heartache.

I build a monster rig with a watercooled GTX 295 and ever since day one I had serious flickering issues with the video card in SLi mode. (it has 2 cores)

I searched high and low for a solution across the net to no avail. I RMAed the card twice, didn't help. But the key to figuring it out was the second time I RMAed it worked for a minute or 2 then as soon as I opened the NVidia control panel it started flickering again.

This is what made me finally figure it out. I had a resident driver for my monitor installed that never really uninstalled when I tried the myriad of driver changes and configs to get it fixed.

Long story short:

- Yes the GTX 295 is awesome and works great
- You should probably start with a fresh install of all drivers and NOT install a resident monitor driver. Also make sure a resident monitor driver wasn't automatically installed.
- EVGA was really cool about the RMAs but the shipping started adding up.

My specific setup is as follows:

- EVGA GTX 295 Water Cooled edition
- BFG 1200w power supply
- Acer X222 monitor

I hope this helps anyone else struggling with this obscure but crazy hard to figure out problem.

Tony D.

[pcclan]

have you tried different sli thingys

[artoodeeto]

I encountered a similar flickering issue on (originally) my dual 7950GT-dual-20"-Samsung setup under Vista x64. Had a lot of back and forth with Nvidia about it, none of use could figure it out. finally turns out that the problem lay in my screens - there was a bad batch of them that flickered when run off a newer video card at the screen's native res. Didn't flicker at all when set lower than 1600x1200. And only the primary screen flickered, secondary never did. It was bizarre, but getting Powerstrip and minutely adjusting the timings fixed it. But....I now have a single GTX 285 and Windows 7 x64...and powerstrip causes a system crash whenever I try and change the timings. The flickering now happens on the secondary screen, so it's not quite as much of an issue. Luckily I only paid $200 for each screen 2.5 years ago. other than the flicker issue they're fantastic. Oh well...it'll be time for new ones at some point if I can't get Powerstrip going again.