Flickering problem with AMD e350 and IdeaPad S205

[semo]

From what I've read so far, it seems that some AMD e350 systems are suffering from flickering screens. I'd like to find out if anyone else has similar problem or has heard of a solution.

I have an IdeaPad S205 and it started flashing a horizontal line across the screen after I installed an SSD and more RAM. I noticed that it seemed to happen after waking up from sleep so I switched off that feature. It now happens less often (haven't noticed the problem for the last few days). Another problem is that the mouse becomes distorted (sometimes half of it disappears or it turns in to a checkered box) after opening/closing the lid. It goes back to normal after restarting the netbook. I haven't closed the lid on the netbook all day and I haven't seen the funny mouse pointer at all even after running the FAHclient for a couple of hours. I've suspected driver issues rather than heat for some time but I can't yet put my finger on it and I'm still trying to find a way to reproduce this intermittent behaviour.

My other gripe with this netbook is the poor driver support for 7 64-bit. Not even an Ethernet driver!

I hope that this thread helps someone… or me

Edit: just found a workaround the mouse curser problem. Just leave the W7 magnifier on in the background and set it to 100%.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1559534

 

[semo]

The flickering seems to have gone away but the corrupted mouse still appears. I try not to close the lid, and if I do, I either have to leave the magnifier on or restart.

Also, browsing the net is not as smooth as it should be. I notice some stuttering every once in a while even with a Corsair F3 120GB. I wouldn't recommend this netbook to anyone. Never had these problems with ULV Intels (obviously sacrafice some GPU performance)

 

[Phylyp]

I've a nettop with the AMD E-350 that had similar issues - triggered apparently by a RAM upgrade. See my thread here: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2199792. My problem has some parallels with yours, though its not exactly the same.

As part of my troubleshooting, I had set the memory clock to 400 MHz (instead of the default 533 MHz for the E-350), and I found that this caused increased stuttering while playing light games & browsing. I suspected this was GPU related.

I was able to confirm this by running "winsat mem" and "winsat dwm" which showed my system and graphics memory bandwidth. At 533 MHz, I got ~5 GB/s memory and ~3 GB/s video memory bandwidth, at 400 MHz they were 25% lesser.

You might want to see what figures you get.

FYI, "winsat.exe" is the engine behind the Windows Experience Index. While WEI is often derided, I find winsat.exe itself provides useful quick-glance benchmarks, without needing to install a full benchmarking suite.

Btw, I've ordered a 1 TB 2.5" hard drive. Seeing as your problems started after a RAM+storage upgrade, I hope I'm able to install it without any issues (power figures for the new HDD vs existing one are the same/lesser).

Could you also point me to other useful threads that you came across discussing this problem with the E-350?