Radeon 8500 flickering

There is a fairly widespread problem surfacing where ATI's Radeon 8500 graphics card produces flickering artifacts -- especially when displaying small text or other diminutive screen items including some applications' tool palettes. The problem seems to appear, in most cases, when users apply the October 2004 ATI Radeon ROM update.

MacFixIt reader Jonathan, who is experiencing the problem writes.

"I've been having problems with my ATI Radeon 8500 64MB since the October ATI Radeon ROM and ATI Displays 4.4 Updates. The problem is screen flickering around thin high contrast areas. These behaviors seem to occur in any application including TextEdit, Mail, Photoshop, and Safari."

"My system is a Quicksilver 867 Mhz, 1.5 GB RAM, OS 10.3.5, Radeon 8500 64MB. I have two monitors hooked up both in Millions of colors, one a Lacie Electron Blue IV 22" running at 1600x1200 70hz and a Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u 19" running at 800x600 120hz."

A poster to VersionTracker's discussion boards, Cowicide, corroborates:

"Now, on my second monitor, if the type is black and small; little, flickering artifacts are showing up. This didn't happen before. Fortunately, it's only for certain small type AND it's not too big a deal. Resolution is at 1600x1200, with a refresh rate of 65 Hz, and Millions of colors on this monitor."

If you are experiencing a similar problem, please drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Resources