Flickering across screen with my Raedon 5870 when overclocking

I've heard of other 5800 users experience this same problem and looked for a solution myself, but the couple that I have tried haven't solved the problem yet. I was hoping someone here might know what may be causing it, because I only started experiencing it recently after my latest clean install. I've owned the card since its release and it hasn't behaved this way until now. Could anyone please explain to me how to fix this? I don't know if it's worth mentioning but I've read that it may be more relevant to dual monitor users, which I am.

My Gigabyte 5850 is factory overclocked and the only time I've seen it artifact is when I pushed it higher. (Something like 800+, if I remember, the factory settings are 765/1000). At the moment I'm running the card at 770/1000 with no problems.

However...

After I first got the card I tried using two monitors (dual DVI outputs) and the image on the second monitor was just horrible. Flickering, artifacting and generally unusable. From the reviews at NewEgg.com about the Gigabyte 5850, this is a common problem with dual displays across all driver updates (at least the ones available at that time). I haven't tried recently though.

Does the card have artifacts at stock speeds?

if the answer is no then you are probably looking at a heat or voltage issue.

These may or may not help you

1.) Make sure your card doesn't have dust built up
2.) If you cards has the capability then you could try pushing the voltage up but be careful
3.) you could use a program like afterburner to manually control the fans to get better cooling
4.) your fans could be going out I know one of my 5870's recently had that problem check with your OEM to determine if they can RMA the card for you to replace the fan or send you a new fan. Keep in mind that your OEM may or may not carry these cards anymore and may offer an upgrade to an equivalent card.
5.) Use GPU-Z to determine what bios revision you have. Then check techpowerup to determine if there is a newer BIOS for your card. I know a bios update on my 5870's fixed some of my issues with displayport monitor losing sync and corruption on the desktop/cursor. Your mileage may vary

I suppose I really should have posted my specs. It's in my sig now but I'll post them anyway.

Chassis: Corsair 600T Graphite Series
Motherboard: ASUS P8Z68-V LX
Processor: Intel Core i5 2500k @ 4.6ghz
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus
RAM: CORSAIR Dual-channel DDR3 1600mhz 8GB (2 X 2GB)
GFX: XFX HD Raedon 5870
PSU: Corsair HX 650w Professional Series
OS: Windows 7 Professional (64bit)

@KublaKhan

That sounds like the exact problem I am having now. I just recently reinstalled my video drivers, and it stopped doing it on my primary monitor, and now it's only doing it on my secondary monitor. Only does it the moment I start overclocking it.

@B^gD^ddy~CF~

In response to all your points.
1) Dusted it last week
2) My PSU is a new Corsair 650w, only 50w lower than my previous one, which was said to be more than enough for my specs.
3) I tried out MSIafterburner, and the flickering still occured, if that is the program you are referring to.
4) The fan looks to be working fine.
5) I'll try that.

Thanks for the responses.

The flickering happens because of the different power saving modes coupled with stupid bugs in the driver:

These cards have 3 different 'speeds' to save power: minimum, medium and full, and automatically switch modes whenever necessary. Each of these three modes applies to GPU speed as well as memory speed (i.e.; you have 3 different GPU speeds and 3 different memory speeds).

Disclaimer: right now I don't remember the exact Mhz values and I can't be bothered to search, so if I switched the minimum memory and GPU values used below you already know why.

1. Insufficient clock speed to drive multiple monitors (*not sure if AMD has fixed this already): when you overclock the card, the minimum GPU core clock speed drops to 157 Mhz on idle (instead of the minimum 400 Mhz when you are not overclocking) and is no longer enough to drive more than one monitor without creating artifacts. 157 Mhz, however, is enough for one monitor, which is why this issue never occurs on single monitor systems.

The solution is forcing the minimum GPU clock speed to 400 Mhz by editing the profiles. More on this below.

2. Screen jitter when playing videos/flash content: video codecs lock *memory* to 300 Mhz while the video is playing. If the memory speed at idle is lower than that, the screen will 'jump/jitter' when the card switches to a higher memory speed at the start of the video. Very annoying. Note that this is related to changing memory speeds only, the changing of GPU speeds does NOT produce this issue.

Again, the solution is to edit the profile and make sure RAM speed is set to the maximum for all three possible power saving modes. This way RAM speed remains constant and you no longer have the screen jumping all over the place every time a new power mode enters in gear.

How to edit the Profiles/Presets:

Each of the three power saving modes has four different parameters: GPU voltage, GPU speed, Memory voltage, Memory speed. If you edit one of the profiles.xml file in Notepad, this appears like this (DO NOT use these values, this is just an example):

<Feature name="CoreClockTarget_1">
<Property name="Want_0" value="40000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="55000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="85000" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="PowerControl_1">
<Property name="Want" value="0" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="MemoryClockTarget_1">
<Property name="Want_0" value="110000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="110000" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="110000" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="CoreVoltageTarget_1">
<Property name="Want_0" value="1000" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="1038" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="1050" />
</Feature>
<Feature name="MemoryVoltageTarget_1">
<Property name="Want_0" value="0" />
<Property name="Want_1" value="0" />
<Property name="Want_2" value="0" />
</Feature>

Note that this card does not allow you to change memory voltage, which is why the MemoryVoltageTarget fields are all set to zero. Which speeds and voltages to use also depend on which card you have, so be careful with that.

If you are using multiple cards in Crossfire, or a dual GPU card, you will see more than one block like that, i.e; one for each GPU. Up to you to figure out which to change. :-P

When you create a new profile (now called Presets) in Catalyst, it is saved to

C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Local\ATI\ACE\Profiles\

Now, to add to the confusion, in the latest Catalyst versions, you MUST have the AMD Overdrive page selected and visible in Catalyst when creating a new profile, otherwise the data you need to change will not be in the profile xml file (I wonder who AMD is hiring for making Catalyst!!!).

So, you need to create a new profile/preset holding the above data. You can then edit the profile XML file using Notepad and set the appropriate values.

From then on, every time you reboot the system you need to open Catalyst and apply the profile you've edited manually. After that no more screen flicker until you reboot again.

This ^ is news to me. Whatever fixes your issues I guess. I was having all sorts of issues with curser corruption and displayport screen losing sync. My 5870's came with 012.014.000.005. If you do update your bios just make sure you use GPU-Z to save your current bios and only update to a bios that has the same clock modes as your current bios. You don't want to update your bios to one for a non-reference card with higher clocks if that is not what you have. You can check out what I was seeing here
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1490196.
The bios that I upgraded to that fixed my problems put out slightly more voltage on the displayport to keep from losing sync and modified the clock modes ever so slightly if I remember correctly.
Something other things you might check
1.) you have good connections on all of your monitors, and cables, dust the connections out.
2.) make sure you don't have oxidation on any type of connection. You can use a pink pencil eraser to help you clean the connections. These can occur on memory modules and video card connectors but is dependent on the type of environment you live in for the most part. I had a buddy that couldn't get a stable system with all of his memory modules loaded. The clean with the eraser trick fixed him right up.
3.) you might check is to see what kind of temps you are hitting as well
4.) This guy above could be right about one thing I've seen plenty of people who have their cards get "stuck" at the wrong frequencies or modes and have it cause problems. You should have 3 modes for your card and when you are on the desktop doing nothing it should be at the lowest clocked mode.

Well that's all I got good luck to ya