SSDR Panadapter Jumping / Flickering

Asher - K0AU · January 2022

Brand new Win11 machine with nVidia 3060ti graphics adapter. Pair of Dell 4K monitors. Fresh installs of everything. Latest drivers and Bios. SSDR v3.2.39

Panadapter flickers when I overlay DAX, Display or Band. Symptom goes away when I slow down Display FPS. Same symptom with SSDR window on either monitor. Doesn't matter if SSDR window is full screen or partial screen. G-Sync is turned off.

Any thoughts on what else to check?

Dean Jacobsen · February 2022

I will bump this because I am seeing flickering also on SSDR v3.2.39.
New install of SSDR with new radio.
- Windows 11
- NVIDIA RTX3080
The flickering isn't present when the Panadapter menu on the left side is present but the flickering will start when I either try and hide the menu or when i open up one of the menu items.
I recall seeing a document or forum post on how to make SSDR and graphics cards play nice but I can't find it now.
73
Dean W6DBJ

Dean Jacobsen · February 2022

I found the Help Desk document I was thinking of:
https://helpdesk.flexradio.com/hc/en-us/articles/203095129-Improving-SmartSDR-video-performance-on-your-Intel-NVIDIA-GPU-laptop
However, the NVIDIA control panel app has changed a bit in the last 7 years so I wasn't able to follow the recommended steps. I did make some changes that i though might help, but they didn't.
Hopefully someone will chime in, the flickering causes the panadapter to be completely unusable when the menu is either hidden or one of the menu items is activated.

Asher - K0AU · February 2022

Dean,

Thanks. Looked at your doc link and the control panel has indeed changed. I get the flickering on the DAX, Display and Band tabs or when I close the lefthand sidebar with the RX to DAX buttons.

Dean Jacobsen · February 2022

I have also noticed that the flickering seems to go away when I decouple the right side control panels from the panadapter.
So, since a have a 6400M with the front panel, I have been operating both ways. Not a big deal about the occasional flickering with SmartSDR.
73,
Dean W6DBJ

Asher - K0AU · February 2022

I haven't looked at the programming docs, but sometimes a major OS rev deprecates an API or exposes a previous API usage as not fully compliant. Wonder if anything like that is going on here and if Flex has built out a big enough fleet of new Win 11 machines in their test lab. One of the side effects of running an app on Windows (or iOS) is you have to adapt to the vendors' update cadence and don't get to blame them for "breaking" your app.

I really hope there's a major rev of SSDR in the works. We've been on 3.x for a long time and haven't seen new features in a while. Lot of important things would be nice: low latency audio system, support multiple radios on one computer, improving multi-slice interface to loggers

John KB4DU · February 2022

I learned n my first computer operation in the middle 70’s not to install updates unless a fix is needed, not broke don’t fix it. In some versions of windows, pro and higher, updates can be turned off. With the enterprise version at work, no updates get installed until vetted by IT, esp the security peeps. The most recent install was a 2020 update.

David Decoons, wo2x · February 2022

There are alpha testers that test using Win 11. I know. I am one of them.

Since 3.2.39 was release prior to Windows 11, we couldn’t test full compatibility with Win 11 until it was released.

I ran a preview release of Win 11 on a Dell XPS 15 laptop with a 6600 running 3.2.39 at Field Day this past year. The Dell has a 4K touchscreen and Nvidia 1060 graphics. I was also using a 32” 2k monitor connected as second monitor. No issues.

At home I have an Intel I9 11900 CPU, 32 GB DDR4 3600 ram, Samsung 980 Pro PCIe gen 4 SSD and a Samsung 980 gen 3 NVME. Graphics is Nvidia 2080 Super video card. in testing with 3.2.39 which I use in between alpha versions of SmartSDR I do not see any flickering when opening the side menus. Can you post a screenshot of your display settings panel in SmartSDR? Left side click display and take a screenshot. Windows 11 has a nice program called Snipping Tool which allows you to capture part of the screen.

Now, several things.

First, drivers. Update to latest driver from www.nvidia.com They will have latest driver. PC manufacturers and Microsoft will have older versions of the driver and since both of you are using Nvidia 30 series cards, which are relatively new, I suggest you update.

Second, how are you connecting from the PC to monitor? If using HDMI, does the end of the cable say HDMI on it? There is a difference with HDMI cables and running 4K probably requires a high speed cable. If you are using a cable that doesn’t allow enough bandwidth it may cause issues. Google it if you want.

Last, are you running the monitor in its native resolution? If not, check graphics settings in Windows 11 and try it.

Let me know if it helps.

Dave wo2x

Asher - K0AU · February 2022

Dave,

Thanks for weighing in.

I am running Win11 on a Dell Alienware with an i7-11700 CPU, 16GB of RAM and an SSD drive. Video is nVidia RTX 3060 Ti. Displays are a pair of Dell S3221QS screens running native 3840 x 2160 on DisplayPort. I am using the latest nVidia studio drivers (511.65). Scale is set to MSFT-recommended 150%. I have seen no change to the flickering with different driver revisions and the same thing happens with game and studio drivers.

If I set FPS below 10FPS then flickering goes away. Flickering rate increases as FPS increases. Adjusting the SSDR window size (small window, full screen, spanning two monitors, dragging to a different monitor) does not change the flickering.

The flickering appears to be a vertical bounce in the panadapter pane. If I turn off waterfall then I still get a flicker without a bounce (almost as if the flicker is the pan is trying to resize to the total window height of pan + waterfall). During the flicker the yellow carat at the top of the tuning line flashes off and on and the dbM tape on the right side of the screen bounces up and down. I can also trigger the flicker by changing the waterfall height, but only if I make the waterfall taller.

If it's a hint there's another strange video symptom. I have my screen set to sleep after 30 minutes. On waking all the SSDR panes other than the pan are blank. Mousing over the blank panels repaints elements I mouse over and dragging the entire window from one monitor to the other restores all the blank panes.

K1FR · February 2022

I am having very similar if not exactly the same issues. Using WIndows 10 , NVIDIA card, and SSDR 3.2.29. The issue of blank panels seems to happen every time the screen saver cuts in. Minimizing the SSDR window and then restoring it makes the display OK. Have been chasing this for a few weeks. I find that Visual Studio 2019 exhibits somewhat similar issues with buttons disappearing. There are some threads on the VS2019 forum about fixes. So far, none have been reported as successful.

73, Tom K1FR

David Decoons, wo2x · February 2022

That is strange and I have not seen that behavior. I would suggest opening a Help Desk ticket. Maybe the support staff have seen something like that before?

I am using a Sony 4k HDR TV as a primary monitor and a 32" Asus 32" 2k as wing monitor.

How are you connecting the monitors? Display port or HDMI? If HDMI does your cable have HDMI on the end of the connector? That usually designates it is a high speed cable and at 4K you may need high speed HDMI cables.

Dave wo2x

K1FR · February 2022

Dave:

Thanks for the comment. I did open a help desk ticket back when this started a month or more ago. Got quick and super help from them as always. Part of my issue at that time was a corrupted profile, and they got that squared away. Then the issue became more weird and I also found that my other computer running same SSDR version did not exhibit the issue. So, thought it was a non-Flex issue and set about trying to figure it out.

Cannot report much progress to date. Was guessing it was a NVIDIA driver issue (NVIDIA on my other machine, but a much older card). My main computer has an on-board Intel GPU. Switched to that - ugh! The problem persisted. That's about the time I quit trying to debug the issue.

When I saw K0AU's post I got interested again.

Re your question about cables - yes HDMI and good quality. I also use this machine for Microsoft Flight Simulator which really taxes the graphics, and there no issues there. So, that is not 100% proof of it being a non-issue, but guessing it is not.

Asher (K0AU) -- do you by any chance use your computer for flight sim? A long shot, but I am wondering if we might find another common factor.

73, Tom K1FR

Asher - K0AU · February 2022

I do not use my computer for Flight Sim. I am using it for EDA tools as well as SSDR and associated ham apps.

My latest data point: I updated BIOS and non-video drivers using the supplied Alien tool. Lo and behold, the sleep problems and the flicker problem went away. Fingers crossed they'll stay away and not return in a later update.

There's no way to tell if the problem is some sleep/wake event that SSDR isn't handling or if the problems are more pervasive in WPF. I'm running it all in remote desktop this week and to my complete surprise it's working pretty well (as long as I use the RDC client and not the RD client)

I seriously doubt the cable theory. I've had cable problems and they present as whole-screen flicker, not jumping around in one window or one pane.

There are just too many combinations of Windows versions, graphics drivers, .NET versions... not to mention CPU flavors, other device drivers and Windows settings.

The only really bad thing I can trace to the nVidia driver is that "in-game overlay" kills the DXLab logger for some reason. It's a documented interaction that makes the load time for the logger very slow.

Stan VA7NF · February 2022

My screen flickers on rare occasion when displaying a Word file - SmartSDR is not even started. Appears the flickering is back in the driver rather than in the SmartSDR, which just happens to trigger the event for you.

Dean Jacobsen · February 2022

Asher - K0AU wrote:

"... My latest data point: I updated BIOS and non-video drivers using the supplied Alien tool. Lo and behold, the sleep problems and the flicker problem went away. Fingers crossed they'll stay away and not return in a later update. ..."

I also use a Dell Alienware gaming computer [Ryzen R9 5900 and an NVIDIA RTX3080 graphics card] to run SSDR. The flickering problem has disappeared for me too... for whatever reason...

I had stopped using SSDR to operate the 6400M but now I am back to the software.

73

Dean W6DBJ

K1FR · February 2022

Amazing! Same here. After reading Asher's post, I set about updating with the Alienware app (which I uninstalled for some reason now forgotten). In the process, and prior to any Dell update, realized that my SSDR is now "fixed" as well. I did have a Windows update this week. Perhaps that fixed the issue. Weird, but I am not arguing! 😃

73

Tom K1FR

Asher - K0AU · February 2022

Tom - Fantastic!

I'm going to make a wild guess the flicker problem is the waterfall dropping off the screen when SSDR misses a sample. I believe the Alien updates included an ethernet driver update.

I'll open a trouble ticket so Flex at least has something to track. If my guess is right, a reasonable fix would be for the waterfall to holdover and just blank rather than dropping out.

Dean Jacobsen · February 2022

I suppose your guess is as good as any. :-) I have no idea what fixed it on my end. I would have 4 concurrent windows open and running on my 4k monitor and the SSDR window was the only one that had problems. I use the computer for a variety of graphics intensive purposes and that temporary problem with SSDR was the only glitch I have ever had with the computer.

73

Dean W6DBJ

BA4KW · February 2022

Maybe there is a problem with the graphics card driver, go to the official website of the graphics card to download the latest driver installation, and enable this program in the device manager

KM4CQG · September 2023

What's the latest on this in the past week I am now starting to see this Flickering

I'm using a I9 and Nvidia 3060TI graphics card?

Trying out the previous posts suggestions. My SDR version v3.5.8

Ian

KM4CQG

SSDR Panadapter Jumping / Flickering

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