Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (2912 mails)

[Preston Crawford <me@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've been having a problem for some time with my video display. I used
to think it was related to SuSE, but a while back I installed Windows
and my machine did the same thing. Basically what it does is it subtly
turns a little darker for a brief second then goes back to normal. It
happens randomly and it's extremely annoying. I have an NEC CRT 17"
monitor. Only like a year and a half old. It's getting really old,
though, and I'm not sure what to do.
                                                                                
Part of me wants to replace the monitor. But then another part of me
says that it could be the video card (ATI Radeon 7000). I once tried to
install Fedora Core 3 and it wouldn't install. ALWAYS got hung up on
configuring X. That seems like a video card problem, doesn't it?

Anyway, after writing this out (I also posted to the newsgroup) I
removed the Radeon 7000 and let the on-board video take over. No
flickers so far. Very strange. Assuming the video card is at fault and
not the monitor could the problem be that the video card is too "strong"
for the monitor? I know that may sound stupid, but I'm green when it
comes to issues like this with hardware. If it's just a bum card (I've
never heard of video cards just going bad, so that's why I'm perplexed)
what's a good low-end business video card that will drive my monitor at
1024x768 at a refresh rate of 85?

Preston