Black Screens or Flicker After Graphics Tweaks

If your screen goes black briefly, flickers, or stutters when switching between windows after applying graphics tweaks, this is a known and fixable situation.

On AMD graphics

The usual cause is a Windows display feature called Multi-Plane Overlay. It is the single most common source of AMD black screens, flicker and switching stutter, and it is not caused by our tweaks so much as exposed by them.

There is a specific tweak for it on the GPU page that disables it. Sign out or restart afterwards to apply it. This is the first thing to try.

If you applied the advanced graphics items

Two of them are deliberately aggressive. Disabling GPU preemption and the timeout watchdog gives the lowest frame latency, but if your graphics card stops responding your PC will freeze rather than recovering. If you started getting black screens after enabling that, revert it.

The same applies to forcing a maximum performance state, which runs the card hotter.

How to revert safely

Rule out the simple things

A loose or failing display cable produces exactly these symptoms. If you have another cable, try it before assuming it is software.

Update your graphics driver

An old driver combined with aggressive settings is a common pairing here. Update from the manufacturer, then reapply.

Related: Hardware tweaks, Undoing tweaks.