Monitor distortion during Windows boot up

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Gawd
Joined
Aug 25, 2010
Messages
659
Just before I upgraded to my current GTX 1080 Ti, I was using a GTX 980 Ti on driver 382.53. When I plugged in my GTX 1080 Ti and booted the PC up, everything was fine. Then I updated the drivers to the latest version (384.76 at the time) and got monitor distortion during Windows boot up. I used the "clean install" option. I rolled back to 382.53 and the distortion went away. Now, a new driver has released (384.94) and thought to give it a try but the problem is still there. Seems any driver after 382.53 has this issue (however I haven't tried drivers even older though). I even gave DDU a shot and it didn't help for a complete clean install of the latest driver (384.94). Any ideas? Gaming and everything else seems fine. It's only during boot up.

 
So that's the only problem?

No other glitches during normal use?

Are you running a higher refresh than the monitor supports?

I wouldn't worry about it. It looks like noise during video mode switching.
It may be caused by something they had to change to fix a different problem.

I've seen systems have some noise like that when the GPU switches modes to load the desktop.

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It seems it is the only problem as I haven't encountered anything else so far. I have the monitor set to 165 Hz through the OSD (the highest it supports). Maybe I should try it with it set to a lower refresh rate. By the way, this is not harmful to anything in any way, correct?
 
The distortion itself isn't harmful, but over driving the refresh rate higher than it should be could be harmful to the monitor over time.

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Thanks. The 165 Hz refresh rate is officially supported by the monitor. I have the ASUS ROG Swift PG279Q.
 
Okay, I tried something today. First of all, while they advertise 165 Hz on the box of the monitor it is actually considered an overclock. I think the actual official refresh rate is 144 Hz for this monitor (but I could be wrong). In order to enable 165 Hz, you need to go into the monitor's OSD and under "overclocking" enable 165 Hz. What I did was drop the refresh rate to 120 Hz and restart the computer. The distortion was gone. Then I kept increasing the refresh rate and found out anything above 160 Hz (but the next step up from 160 Hz is 165 Hz with nothing in between) the distortion comes back. I have it set to 160 Hz currently and there is no boot up distortion. I guess it is due to the refresh rate but wonder why this didn't happen on the older drivers where I could run 165 Hz without any boot up distortion.

Since the distortion is only during boot up, will it still be safe to run it at 165 Hz as everything is fine when in Windows now that we know it is due to the refresh rate? As stated previously, I have it set to 160 Hz just to be safe and there is no boot up distortion.
 
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does the monitor allow you to see the refresh rate on screen? if it does, maybe you can see if the refresh is changing a lot during booting with the new drivers causing that distortion..
 
yeah that could be it. the distortion could be caused as the refresh rate changing from 60 to 165 when windows boots and loads the nv driver. I doubt it will cause any harm to either the card or monitor.
 
Thanks for the replies.

However, how come the distortion is not there when I set the refresh rate to 160 Hz instead of 165 Hz? How come there is no distortion when the refresh rate changes from 60 Hz to 160 Hz during boot up?
 
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