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Youtube, Discord, Visual Studio Code are flickering with black checkered squares/vertical lines. Partial solutions to this issue.

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First of all, I would like to say why I made this post. My initial goal is, of course, to help other people with this problem. There is already a similar post about artifacts, but in that post there are two different problems that are not related to each other and appeared at different times, so in this post I will only talk about the second one, because it can be solved, it can be reproduced, and we need report it to NVIDIA.

Here is my video with these artifacts:

On some other videos it doesn't flicker as often. It also sometimes happens in the form of checkered squares

I also have screenshots of my Discord with these artifacts:
I couldn't take a screenshot in Visual Studio Code, but Reddit user NightmareP69 has this screenshot:
Also for example a few links to other users' posts on Reddit with attached videos, where there are the same artifacts: I'm having issues with, checkered black flashing square artifacting, while watching youtube videos. and Please Help, when watching YouTube my monitor gets these black squares. Updated drivers have applied, cable connections checked.


My little story about this issue:

As a "Windows update lover", in October I installed the 22h2 update for Windows 10, and after a couple of days I began to notice these artifacts in Discord and Visual Studio Code. I use the computer every day and I work in Visual Studio Code, and of course I use both programs every day, so it was easy to notice those flickering vertical lines and black checkered squares. It appeared completely randomly, for example, while minimizing and expanding window of program, or while I was typing text while watching a stream on Discord. Of course, I immediately started testing my computer. I've done a lot of tests in MATS/MODS, I did a lot of tests in OССT (of course not for only GPUs tests), I made a lot of attempts to trigger artifacts in Superposition in 8k, Furmark, Kombustor, 3Dmark, for a long month I tested my GPU many times, but everything worked perfectly, there was no crashes, no BDOS, no any errors. I tried downvolting. I even completed Cyberpunk 2077 on ultra and didn't get a any artifact. After that, I tried to change my RAM, PSU, I even tried a similar GPU (Palit Dual RTX 2060s), but these artifacts still appeared randomly in Discord and Visual Studio Code, albeit not every day.
After a while, I started using a new Youtube style with ambient background in a dark theme and suddenly started noticing these same artifacts in some videos when I use 4k quality (and sometimes 2k). This does not happen with all videos in 4k, but only with some, sometimes such videos are hard to find, but I found a couple of such videos where my GPU have artifacts. One of these videos is in this post. Since then I realized that I can finally work in finding the cause of the issue.


What I know about this issue after losing a significant amount of nerve cells:

- This issue is related to DirectX11 API after 22h2 update and also is tied to display refresh rate, and low GPU load
- If you open any game or start any screen recording (even just opening OBS without recording is enough), then artifacts from Youtube disappear, but these artifacts can still appear in Discord. It was thanks to the screen recording that I was able to take those screenshots with my Discord, otherwise it would not be possible due to the fact that the flickering occurs randomly and in a split second.
- This issue occurs with RTX 2000 and RTX 3000
- Each GPU model will have its own video where artifacts are appears. I won't be able to see the artifacts on the video where you have it, and also you will do not see artifacts where my GPU has it (except of course if you have Palit Dual RTX 2060s too)
- This issue by Microsoft most likely, NVIDIA needs to contact Microsoft and start looking for the consequences of the autumn 22h2 update, but unfortunately many people do not report about this to NVIDIA, because this issue is reproduced in a very specific way, and also many people unfortunately think that artifacts = always problems with VRAM or the GPU itself. But this is not the case and your GPU is fine.


What I know about solving this issue after my suffering:

- My display: 1080p 75Hz (without G-Sync and FreeSync technologies), when I switch display refresh rate from 75Hz to 60Hz, these artifacts disappear. When I return 75Hz, the artifacts start to appear again
- You can turn off hardware acceleration in your browser (this is a bad solution, because the browser will become slower and the CPU load will be higher. I do not recommend doing this)
- This issue is related to DirectX 11 API, which is why these artifacts only appear with Chromium browsers. Chromium use the DX11 API as a standard API, so you won't see artifacts in the Firefox browser. Therefore, as a solution, we can change API in any of the Chromium browsers.
Follow these steps:
1.⠀chrome://flags - for Google Chrome
⠀⠀opera://flags - for Opera
⠀⠀edge://flags - for Edge
2. search ANGLE
3. Change API to anything other than Default and DX11. I highly recommend to choose OpenGL because it is the best option for NVIDIA GPUs.
At the moment, this is the best solution that I have found, but unfortunately you cannot change the API in Discord and Visual Studio Code, these programs use DX11 by default, but fortunately artifacts in these programs are rare.
- Most likely "maximum performance" in the NVIDIA control panel will help, it's just logical, but I'm not going to use it.

Also, the fact that this problem is caused by the 22h2 update is proved by the fact that people began to complain about these artifacts, calling the October-November period the time when they began to notice it, and just at that time all Windows 10 and 11 users began to automatically receive this update on their computers.


Additional Information:
Thanks to user pavle and his post, I realized that these "artifacts" are similar to how nvidia renders the scene starting with nvMaxwell (tile based), just watch this video at 12 minutes. That is, thanks to the new cool "optimizations" by Microsoft, some users began to observe the flickering of this render on their screen


What else the 22h2 update brought us last fall, according to my observations:
- As a Rainbow 6 Siege player, it's most likely that the skybox processing problems (skybox flickers black) also started after this update and new drivers from NVIDIA. But this is easily solved if you play through the Vulkan API. Watch Dogs 2 has the same problem, but this game only has the DirectX11 API.
I found another solution to this issue: in Windows 10/11 you can turn off HAGS and then skybox will stop flickering, but this only works for RTX2000, RTX3000 and RTX4000. If you have for example GTX 1060 your skybox will still flicker.
I'm not claiming that the problem with the Rainbow 6 Siege and Watch Dogs 2 engine appeared immediately after 22h2, but it looks very much like that, especially after my second observation below. Maybe that's why NVIDIA still can't fix this problem.
- I've been using Wallpaper Engine for many years and it wasn't until I installed the 22h2 update that some of my wallpapers started flickering black. This is only related to some wallpapers (scenes) that are processed with DirectX 11, most other wallpapers work fine and you probably won't even notice it if you use this program. This black flicker appears randomly and is very similar to skybox issue in the games above where the background disappears but all the textures in the game are fine at that time. I even managed to record it on several computers. Here are screenshots of this: Normal, At the moment of flicker and here is a video from another computer


To be honest, when I started work in finding the cause of the issue, I feel like I’m struggling with this alone, so I hope that if Microsoft and Nvidia don’t pay attention to my post, then at least I will help people who have this problem. But I hope there are still people who will report this to NVIDIA with all details.
 
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Thank you very much for such detailed information. I will start testing Opera and Edge browsers in OpenGL mode and will write about the result in a few days.
 

alutyl

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I wrote to nvidia support with as much detail as possible and screenshots of this problem from many people but they did not register my problem and I think they are not interested in fixing it. They told me to just install a new driver and that's it.
I am also sending more screenshots of this problem here. Each screenshot is from a different person.
my1.pngreddit 3.pngreddit 4.pngreddit.pngrrr.pngtechpowerup.png

And here is a comparison of the rendering process and our artifacts

same.png

I also ask you to write to nvidia support and provide everything they ask for. I also want you to remind them that you are not the only one who has already written to support about this problem. Here is my number - "Artifacts issue [Incident: 230324-000128]"

Here are some threads on Reddit with artifacts like ours:
 
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As someone running Kepler on Linux using the Nvidia Linux binary with 60Hz monitors, I still read the whole post. Glad you were able to sus this out a bit. Also reminds me of why I long ago concluded new != better.
 
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Very interesting stuff. One question however.

I have several rtx 3000 series cards in windows 10/11 builds, and never saw this pattern so far. On one 3090 I do have artifacts sometimes, but only after startup and then the nvidia kernel driver clearly appears to be crashing, that seems a different one than your description. But why do some RTX 2000/ 3000 series have this issue, and others don’t, if it’s a Windows DirectX 11 thing?
Also, if it’s a Windows thing, why does this only happen with nvidia gpus and not with AMD gpus. So looks more like a Nvidia-Windows thing?
 
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Very interesting stuff. One question however.

I have several rtx 3000 series cards in windows 10/11 builds, and never saw this pattern so far. On one 3090 I do have artifacts sometimes, but only after startup and then the nvidia kernel driver clearly appears to be crashing, that seems a different one than your description. But why do some RTX 2000/ 3000 series have this issue, and others don’t, if it’s a Windows DirectX 11 thing?
Also, if it’s a Windows thing, why does this only happen with nvidia gpus and not with AMD gpus. So looks more like a Nvidia-Windows thing?
There are many factors that may still be unknown and lead to these artifacts. At least, I found out that in my case these artifacts can be fixed by switching to 60Hz or changing graphical API in browsers. It is also possible that laptops are not affected by this problem (as they mostly have 2 GPUs and many windows apps / other apps are rendered by Intel/Amd APU). As for the reason why there is no such problem on AMD cards, the answer is simple: this problem is most likely caused between the compatibility of NVIDIA drivers and Windows, so we see a similar rendering in the form of these squares and patterns that are shown in the video from the post about NVIDIA's rendering process. If other problems are also taken into account, AMD has its own issues related to Windows' feature MPO (MultiPlane Overlay), people have been writing about it for a couple of months on various forums, including reddit, and disabling this "optimization" with the mpo_disable.reg file, which can be found here.
In fact, at the moment there are a lot of problems with various things from Microsoft (HAGS, MPO, etc.), and each problem affects each GPU model and driver differently. It remains only to watch how NVIDIA and Microsoft will try to fix it all, because sooner or later they will have to do it, people with different problems will not go anywhere.

I wrote to nvidia support with as much detail as possible and screenshots of this problem from many people but they did not register my problem and I think they are not interested in fixing it. They told me to just install a new driver and that's it.
I am also sending more screenshots of this problem here. Each screenshot is from a different person.

And here is a comparison of the rendering process and our artifacts


I also ask you to write to nvidia support and provide everything they ask for. I also want you to remind them that you are not the only one who has already written to support about this problem. Here is my number - "Artifacts issue [Incident: 230324-000128]"

Here are some threads on Reddit with artifacts like ours:
I've been talking to NVIDIA about this and have sent a lot of messages about this issue. Last time about a week ago Manuel informed me that he had filed this bug (Yes, NVIDIA says it's a bug) and they would try to reproduce it.
In the future, I plan to send them this thread as well, if there are enough people here who will share their videos and new information about issue.
 
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alexboliam

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I wrote to nvidia support with as much detail as possible and screenshots of this problem from many people but they did not register my problem and I think they are not interested in fixing it. They told me to just install a new driver and that's it.
I am also sending more screenshots of this problem here. Each screenshot is from a different person.

And here is a comparison of the rendering process and our artifacts


I also ask you to write to nvidia support and provide everything they ask for. I also want you to remind them that you are not the only one who has already written to support about this problem. Here is my number - "Artifacts issue [Incident: 230324-000128]"

Here are some threads on Reddit with artifacts like ours:
Oh, it's my post on reddit (I'm u/FixEfficient713) :)
I have the same problem as OP, and switching to 60Hz also helped for me
 
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OK. If it’s a bug, I really would like them to also add it to their drivers’ release notes until it’s fixed because now it looks like they are just covering it up.
 
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OK. If it’s a bug, I really would like them to also add it to their drivers’ release notes until it’s fixed because now it looks like they are just covering it up.
They still don’t even add information about Rainbow Six Siege skybox and pretend that this issue does not exist, although a lot of people complain about it, because this issue is reproduced much easier and occurs in almost every player.
But let's hope for the best. I will believe in this thread and in all the people here =)
 

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Just as point of note.

This also works for AMD cards as well. My 6700XT gave me no end of grief with all the black screening, stuttering, freezing chromium browser crashing and AMD GPU 'recoveries'
 

Tarkovski

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I've been talking to NVIDIA about this and have sent a lot of messages about this issue. Last time about a week ago Manuel informed me that he had filed this bug (Yes, NVIDIA says it's a bug) and they would try to reproduce it.
In the future, I plan to send them this thread as well, if there are enough people here who will share their videos and new information about issue.

I'm glad to know that Nvidia are aware of this. Hopefully they will fix it soon...

Thank you so much for all you are doing!!
 
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i have similar problems in a bunch of applications like steam, firefox and chrome with all my nvidia cards since at least 6 months.
brave seems to not have this issue.
 
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I'm glad to know that Nvidia are aware of this. Hopefully they will fix it soon...

Thank you so much for all you are doing!!
I think they still need more reports and knowledge about it. NVIDIA likes to "forget" problems, especially if they understand that these problems are not caused by them, but by Microsoft. It is necessary that people to report this to NVIDIA with all their details and details from this thread, although I understand that recording / screenshoting such an artifact can sometimes be very difficult.
I'm going to forward this thread to them anyway, if people here post their videos and screenshots and share some information.
 
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I have been testing Opera browser in OpenGL mode for 2 days now. No more artifacts!
I will continue to test the browser and the next one will be Edge in OpenGL mode. I will write about the result later.

KsushaTeaKisa is right! It looks like the cause of the artifacts is the DX11 API in Windows version 22H2.
 
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Hello again, everyone. I have good news about the test. Browser testing in OpenGL mode is 100% perfect, zero problems and no artifacts ever!
Please do similar tests to confirm my results!
 
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Added as an official bug by NVIDIA and assigned a bug track ID [3992875]
Small checkerboard like pattern may randomly appear in Chromium based applications [3992875]

If Discord and Visual Studio are using a Chromium backend for the editor etc that should be addressed as well.
 
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Added as an official bug by NVIDIA and assigned a bug track ID [3992875]
Small checkerboard like pattern may randomly appear in Chromium based applications [3992875]

If Discord and Visual Studio are using a Chromium backend for the editor etc that should be addressed as well.
This is good news!
Hopefully the bug will be fixed soon and we won't see those chess patterns again.
 

ls612

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I have seen exactly the same artifact with the Geforce Overlay in addition to in Chrome, on a brand new RMA replacement from EVGA (my old 3080ti died for other reasons) and brand new clean driver install. I've linked a video I took with my phone of it happening in another non chromium-based (afaik) program with the overlay artifacting when turned on. 20230420_195606000_iOS.mov It's an iOS slow motion video so it may not display correctly on other devices.

I suppose this makes sense if it isn't related to Chrome in particular but DirectX.
 
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I have seen exactly the same artifact with the Geforce Overlay in addition to in Chrome, on a brand new RMA replacement from EVGA (my old 3080ti died for other reasons) and brand new clean driver install. I've linked a video I took with my phone of it happening in another non chromium-based (afaik) program with the overlay artifacting when turned on. 20230420_195606000_iOS.mov It's an iOS slow motion video so it may not display correctly on other devices.

I suppose this makes sense if it isn't related to Chrome in particular but DirectX.
Yes you have the same problem as me! Chessboard artifacts appear not only in Chrome browsers, but also in other programs using api DX11. This bug is somewhere at the level of DirectX!
timecodes: 0:20, 0:46, 0:48, 1:02, 1:05, 1:06,

Glitches and artifacts timecode: 1:03, 1:23, 1:32 (!!!), 1:54, 2:05, 2:14 (!!!), 4:57, 5:45, 5:51, 5:54 (!!!),
 
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yeah, this had been the case since forever basically (since dx11's inception ig)
 
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