Samsung u28d590d occasionally flickers when connected to my Surface Pro 3

[Matthew VanDerlofske]

I have had my Surface Pro 3 (I7, 256, 8GB) for 2 months now and it has worked like a dream. I have never had the heating or wifi problems others have reported but I have had an issue with my 4k monitor I bought when I purchased my SP3. Occasionally it will flicker (screen goes blank for a second and then comes back on).
When it happens I am not generally doing anything intense on the system, usually just in an IDE editor.
Today I installed the drivers for the monitor but it occurred again even after the drivers were installed.
My SP3 is docked and the monitor is connected via the docking station.
I am using both the Samsung monitor and the surface display at the same time.
I am using an Insignia mini display port to HDMI adapter.

I have considered changing out the adapter for a strait mini display port to full size display port cable but I am not sure that will fix anything. I also have not tried for any length of time (no more then an hour) lowering the resolution on the 4k monitor. I have read other articles from people having similar issues on non-surface devices and the resolution was typically update your video driver.

Anyone else having issues like this? It typically occurs once or twice a day (though some days it doesn't happen) and when it does it may only flicker once but sometimes it will flicker several times over a few minutes.

 

[malberttoo]

I have had my Surface Pro 3 (I7, 256, 8GB) for 2 months now and it has worked like a dream. I have never had the heating or wifi problems others have reported but I have had an issue with my 4k monitor I bought when I purchased my SP3. Occasionally it will flicker (screen goes blank for a second and then comes back on).
When it happens I am not generally doing anything intense on the system, usually just in an IDE editor.
Today I installed the drivers for the monitor but it occurred again even after the drivers were installed.
My SP3 is docked and the monitor is connected via the docking station.
I am using both the Samsung monitor and the surface display at the same time.
I am using an Insignia mini display port to HDMI adapter.

I have considered changing out the adapter for a strait mini display port to full size display port cable but I am not sure that will fix anything. I also have not tried for any length of time (no more then an hour) lowering the resolution on the 4k monitor. I have read other articles from people having similar issues on non-surface devices and the resolution was typically update your video driver.

Anyone else having issues like this? It typically occurs once or twice a day (though some days it doesn't happen) and when it does it may only flicker once but sometimes it will flicker several times over a few minutes.

Hi Matthew, welcome to the forum!

I'm assuming this is only happening on the external monitor, and not the Surface display.

You should start with cables, even though it may be a new cable. And like you said, if your monitor supports DisplayPort, I would use DP rather than HDMI.

 

[Matthew VanDerlofske]

Yes it is only the external monitor. I have ordered a mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort 1.2 cable and it should be here by Saturday. I'll post a few days after that if it resolves my issue.
Thanks for the follow-up.

 

[wditters]

I have seen this happen on my 2 monitors (2x Lenovo 2934z in 2560x1080) whenever the Apple iTunes services drive up CPU usage up to approx. 35%. That is where the CPU temperature also starts to rise to the 80 degrees Celsius zone+ and the displays occasionally start to blank out. Not entirely illogical if one considers that the CPU and GPU are on the same chip. Killing both iTunes components from Task Manager invariably brings back stability.

 

[Matthew VanDerlofske]

So the mini display port brought its own issues which I started a new thread about. But I think I may have discovered something.
The issue appears to be caused only when I have the following conditions:
1) I am running a browser (Tested FireFox, Chrome, and IE) maximized on the 4K display.
2) I am on an MSDN page.

I can easily reproduce the issue and I can do it on demand.
It does not occur when:
1) The browser is not maximized.
2) The browser is running maximized on the surface display.
3) I am running the 4K monitor at a resolution lower then 4K.
4) Any site other then MSDN (at least I have not found another yet, I am sure they are using some api call that is causing it)

Here is a video:

I guess I need to open a bug about it.

 

[Matthew VanDerlofske]

Its been a while on this ticket but I am happy to report that with the latest firmware update (1/15/15) this issue appears to have been resolved.