Dell XPS 15 (9550) w/ Intel 530 / NVIDIA 960M - Intel Causing Screen Flickering

Been tracking this for several months (and have had two complete separate machines on which it occurs, and a motherboard replacement, so in fact, three), but have never heard the suggestion of a keyboard shielding replacement. :O When you state "they did not fix it completely" what do you mean exactly? I also have not heard yet of people saying the downgrade does not help 'resolving' this issue. For what its worth, for the countless hours (days, rather) that I have been debugging this, this seems entirely a software issue, possibly a mix of all following three: - Intel HD Graphics 530 drivers - BIOS - PremierColor The BIOS update which was supposed to address the brightness flicker (A10 I believe) in fact made it worse, thus whatever they are fiddling around with, it is my impression they might be more aware than they make it out to be. Or, there is a complete lack of communication internally, and the developers are still clueless about this (wouldn't be too surprising either given how Dell seems to operate). Getting rid of PremierColor, downgrade to Intel Graphics .4331, and BIOS A06 (I believe) for me persistently 'fixes' the issue. Some combinations seem to work as well, but I won't spend time on replicating this.

I agree, i think its a combination of things. I haven't tested PremierColor so much, its already unreliable in that it crashes every now and then for me.

What i meant in regards to A06 is that some users on my thread indicated that using A06 sorted out the flickering for them but for me, it didn't - it helped but not 100%.

I previously rolled backed to intel .4331 - cannot recall with which BIOS version but still had flickering,

Currently on BIOS A16 with 4483 but I will try going back to 4331 and see what happens....

And yes, A10 was a terrible release.

Been tracking this for several months (and have had two complete separate machines on which it occurs, and a motherboard replacement, so in fact, three), but have never heard the suggestion of a keyboard shielding replacement. :O

When you state "they did not fix it completely" what do you mean exactly? I also have not heard yet of people saying the downgrade does not help 'resolving' this issue.

For what its worth, for the countless hours (days, rather) that I have been debugging this, this seems entirely a software issue, possibly a mix of all following three:

- Intel HD Graphics 530 drivers

- BIOS

- PremierColor

The BIOS update which was supposed to address the brightness flicker (A10 I believe) in fact made it worse, thus whatever they are fiddling around with, it is my impression they might be more aware than they make it out to be. Or, there is a complete lack of communication internally, and the developers are still clueless about this (wouldn't be too surprising either given how Dell seems to operate).

Getting rid of PremierColor, downgrade to Intel Graphics .4331, and BIOS A06 (I believe) for me persistently 'fixes' the issue. Some combinations seem to work as well, but I won't spend time on replicating this.

simba2585, before you get too excited about the length of this particular thread...

This thread contains posts about multiple types of flickering. There is a TON of information in this thread about the various flickering, but I imagine no-one wants to read hundreds of posts, so I can point you to one of my previous posts that I recommend you read:
http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3519/p/19660093/20948500#20948500

The primary remaining type of flicker, the dimming flicker where the display dims for a half second then goes back to normal, from what I have seen has nothing to do with software or drivers and is 100% firmware (BIOS). But again, read my previous post. You'll find a link there to the earlier XPS 15 9550 01.01.15 BIOS.  Pre-1.2.x BIOS's have resolved the dimming flicker for many people, regardless of what software is on the machine.  The mentioned A06 BIOS(aka. 01.02.00) is not going back far enough to get rid of that flicker.

I just got off the phone with Dell's social team (@DellCares) given my latest tweet:

@DellCares Another XPS 15 9550 BIOS release. Brightness flickering still present. Suitable for Christmas, not for a laptop, please fix this!

They told me they are aware about the issue and that it is there for performance reasons. In other words, seemingly by design. Yes, they want it to flicker ... My contact person was unaware about a BIOS release in the making which would address this issue.

I pointed out to him most people online are reporting rolling back to older drivers since this does make the system less annoying. If it is truly a 'performance' reason (which I doubt), they obviously chose the wrong tradeoff. He claimed he would provide this feedback to the engineering team.

performance reasons wow!....

that is a poor a response from dell....

just report back, I rolled back to the intel 4331 driver using the latest A16 BIOS, and I haven't noticed a single bit of flicker in almost a day now....potential result for me...

That worked for me in the past as well (with some other BIOS > A06). However, since flickering occurs on the BIOS screen as well, the problem is not solely related to the Intel HD Graphics drivers. It seems to be a combination.

Furthermore, the .4331 drivers do not have the 'Color Gamut' slider in "Display->Color Settings->Advanced", which also seems to be related to color issues (including posterization, mainly visible in black), and other mess in combination with PremierColor.

That said, indeed, rolling back intel driver to .4331, or BIOS to A06, at least removes the worst of our problems.

Heard from Dell today.  They cannot locate a refurbished system to replace mine with so they are going to give me a new one.  Warranty will start from my original purchase date ( which ***) but at least I'll get a new unit.  I see the Dell site shows

Killer 1535 802.11ac 2x2 WiFi and Bluetooth 4.1

for the wifi card.  Maybe that will help with the flicker since someone replaced their wifi card  to get rid of the flicker ( i think).

Does anyone notice anything else in the specs that has changed?

www.dell.com/.../xps-15-9550-laptop

Oh yea, it will take 10-15 business days to get it to me.

Jim

@FloridaJimL

My replacement system also had the same Wifi card replacement. However, this is supposed to fix the extremely severe 'black flicker' which lasts much longer (seconds), not the shorter 'brightness flicker'.

I waited more than 10-15 days to get my replacement. :) In fact, Dell spent 17 days just on placing the order, so brace yourself. :)

The good news is my other hardware issues are fixed since the replacement (battery which broke twice, and random touch screen input). The brightness flicker, however, remains. Not surprisingly since this really does seem software related.

Dell came back to me today with a system offer!  They didn't think I would notice it had a 256GB SSD instead of the 1TB SSD that I bought.  Wrong!

@FloridaJimL Makes you wonder whether they do this on purpose? The exact same thing happened to me. They litterly just had to copy/paste the system specs, and in a first round they messed memory and hard drive up for me as well.

Just like yesterday when Dell tried to convince me that a 256 GB SSD had better performance than my 1 TB drive, (they didn't 'know it was also a SSD evidently).  That discussion took 3-4 minutes.  It would take a lot of performance increase to make up for the 700 GB difference!

Also thought I didn't have a 4k Touch display.

I think we may have come together on an acceptable resolution.

guys, did you try requesting dell to give you replacement 2017 machines - seems to be no point in getting a new machine simply to 'fix' flickering, understandable for other issues however.

surprised at the lack of attention to detail from dell on the spec mishaps...seems like people cant really do their jobs,

Updated this evening with BIOS 1.2.16 - the (light) flicker disappeared.

Wait to uncork the champagne, it is not the first time it seemed won... and reappeared!

@simba2585

That is not allowed.  Read the warranty paperwork.  No Refunds, no replacement, no extension of the warranty, no problem just send it back to the depot.   All of this stated in a very rude and forceful manner.

@g.becattini

That BIOS does not make a difference at all for me, and neither is it listed to do so.

My other (more trustworthy) Dell contact told me they are indeed still fixing the issue, and that an update is to be expected somewhere in the middle of December.

@simba ... haha, right. :) For how long have you been in touch with Dell support? :)