Hello,

I have a Asus ROG strix hero 2 (GL504GM) equipped with an nvidia 1060 and starting day one after installing windows 10 and all the drivers, the screen (144Hz refresh rate) start showing a small horizontal flicker every few minutes when i was just browsing in chrome or other apps. The driver for the GPU was version 430.64.

I did not had time to test any games with that driver, but after the next ones (430.86 and 431.36) i start using the laptop at his full potential and then i start seeing a lot of problems like: horizontal flicker when using apps in desktop, horizontal flickering (one flicker every few minutes) when playing full screen games and the most annoying & frustrating is the black screen (alt+tab like effect) every 2 or 3 minutes.

This back screen effect ruins the gameplay because the mouse is jumping from the game back to desktop and is keeping the game as if it is opened in the background and you have to press alt+tab to jump back in in.

The games i tested and have this problem so far are:
- WOT
- Ghost recon wildlands
- metro exodus
- Spin Tyres: mudrunner - some times (not the with frequency like in the other ones)
- Rage 2
- Assassin`s Creed Odyssey
- Witcher 3


My laptop config: (all drivers are updated)
- i7-8750H
- GTX 1060 6GB
- RAM Kingston 2x8GB 2400MHz
- M.2 Kingstone 128GB SSD
- HDD 2 TB Seagate

- BIOS version 308
- Windows 10 version 1809
- OS Build 17763.615

All the games are played in 1080p resolution with the settings on medium to high. I think my problem is related to the GPU drivers and this is what i did so far:

1. Disable services like Windows reporting tool, etc
2. Changed the frequency of the display from 144Hz to 60Hz - no improvement

3. Using DDU uninstalled and then doing a clean reinstall of the following drivers from nvidia website (only the driver, not the geforce pack):
- 430.86 - black screen (alt+tab) & screen flicker in full screen / window / borderless window games problem still present
- 417.35 - black screen (alt+tab) & screen flicker in full screen / window / borderless window games problem still present
- 417.22 - black screen (alt+tab) & screen flicker in full screen / window / borderless window games problem still present - although it work great for the fist 30-40 minutes (no issues), then is stated back
- 399.24 - black screen (alt+tab) in full screen / window / borderless window games problem still present - although the interval between the black screen has decreased but not by much

4. Tested all the games with every new driver in 60Hz and 144Hz - no difference
5. Games running with high priority from windows and administrator privileges - no difference

6. Disabled the on board intel GPU and test with each driver from the above - no difference
7. I checked in Task manager if there are any programs/tasks that are activated when the black screen is starting - nothing new

8. Installed MSI afterburner and undervolted the GPU - test show that the GPU is stable but the problems are still there in full screen games
9. Benchmarked the GPU (using software like Ungine,etc) - the tests are ok - strange there where no problems?!?!?!?!

10. Usually i`m playing in full 1080p resolution, but i also tested everything with the smaller ones - no effect, the problems are still there
11. After installing MSI afterburner, i installed riva tunner and displayed the usage/frames in games, when the black screen starts or the flicker i did not see any frame drops.

12. Checked the hardware connections to be sure that there is no problem between the screen/hinge/ motherboard - everything is ok
13. Searched the forums to check for the same issue, found posts of people using only external displays, nothing about using only the laptop screen.

14. Checked the option "Disable full screen optimisation" from the compatibility tab of each game i tested - no changes, same issues.
15.I tested with an external display while gaming (almost for 2 full hours) and i was shocked to see that there where no problems, absolutly no flicker, no black screen (alt+tab) what so ever! and after that, i pulled out the HDMI cable and tested with the laptop display (same freq 60Hz, same resolution 1080p) and the problems where still there. - but i cannot use the external display for mobility reasons 😞 .

I have no idea to do next, i feel frustrated that i have a super machine which i cannot use because of a stupid bug in one of the drivers.

Can you guys help or do you have any new ideas that i can test?