Comment # 3 on bug 1189826 from Patrik Jakobsson

It sounds to me like the FIFO underruns are causing the flickering. Can you
provide the output of:

/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_gpu_info
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_display_info
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_cur_wm_latency
/sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_ddb_info

Provide the info from both before and after you "fix" the problem by closing
the lid. That way we can see if there is a change in the configuration.