Advice needed please

[Guest]

Hello, I need advice

I am enjoying old games right now from the great GOG website but some games (ie Divine Divinity) will not run in Windowed mode (I usually play any games in Windowed mode as I can easily move to my 2nd monitor and browse while I play)

The problem is games like DD I have to run in full screen mode so I have to alt-tab when I want to do something on my 2nd monitor, when I alt tab, both monitors flicker 3-4 times, changing the res or whatever it is they do.

It works fine but I am scared this 'flickering' when alt-tab may damage my graphics card or my monitors.

it looks scary, is it safe?

 

[Guest]

Quick spec update
4gb ram
Radeon HD 4670 1gb
monitor 1: 1860x1050
monitor 2: 1024x768

 

[Guest]

oops.. 1680x1050 that is.
also running ccc v11.2

 

[bystander]

The reason it flickers is that they video card is down clocking it's memory and core clocks because you are moving to 2D clocks. That results a flicker as it sets the memory to 2D. Now when you click on that browser to update a site, if you have hardware acceleration set on, it'll go back to full clocks causing a flicker, and when it's done, it will go back down to 2D clocks, causing another flicker.

 

[Guest]

So if I turn Hardware Acceleration off, it'll stop flickering?

 

[bystander]

So if I turn Hardware Acceleration off, it'll stop flickering?

Click on a flash item and turn off hardware acceleration and most the flickering will stop, it may still flicker a little when you alt tab out of a 3D app due to down clocking to 2D clocks. I recently had to turn off hardware acceleration because the constant flickering was annoying.

 

[Guest]

It seems because I'm running the Catalyst drivers, its disabled the hardware acceleration options so I'm stuck with it.

but back to my main concern.. can the flickering damage the monitors or graphics card?

 

[Supermuncher85]

Considered running a VM? Then you can re size and move it to your hearts desire. Can also try D3Dwindower. Might work on some of the older games.

 

[bystander]

It seems because I'm running the Catalyst drivers, its disabled the hardware acceleration options so I'm stuck with it.

but back to my main concern.. can the flickering damage the monitors or graphics card?

I do not believe that it will damage hardware, but I don't know for certain. It seems if it did, a lot of people would be having monitor troubles, as this is the normal behavior of video cards made in the last couple years.