Refresh Rate Changing Itself at Random

Hello all,

Not sure if this is actually a problem with my graphics card, my laptop's screen, or something else but hopefully someone can point me in the right direction:

As the title says, my laptop screen's refresh rate keeps changing itself from 120Hz to 60Hz seemingly at random (mid-game sometimes). When it suddenly starts running at 60Hz, both Windows display settings and the Nvidia control panel still show it's set to 120Hz and it doesn't revert back until I manually switch it to 60 and then back to 120. Turning G-SYNC off doesn't fix the problem. I'm running the latest Game-Ready drivers (441.66) and Windows version 1909 (18363.535).

I tried a clean install of the drivers after running DDU and also tried reverting back to 441.41 (with which I had no issues that I can recall) to no avail. Also clean installed Windows entirely multiple times: once I tried both manually installing all manufacturer drivers and another time I just let Windows Update do its thing and I got the same result with each so I'm at my wit's end trying to figure out what changed.

If anyone is having the same issue or can provide any suggestions, I'd really appreciate the help. Thanks! (My profile is updated with my full system specs).

DxDiag file and screenshot of issue below.


DxDiag.txt





Update: Quite literally just after posting this, I tried fiddling with the Nvidia control panel settings again and I changed the refresh rate to 60Hz and my screen started flickering non-stop and changing it back to 120Hz stopped the flickering but didn't actually change the refresh rate back to 120Hz as it normally always has. Rebooting still temporarily fixes the problem. I'm now thinking my screen is indeed failing though it's shown no other issues...

For starters I was about to hint that if such a problem exist this would be entirely the fault of the Intel GPU driver which is according to your CPU model should be : HD Graphics 630 as usually those are the ones in operation and yet through Optimus technology Nvidia manages to overlay 3D rendering over black screens , so usually in Dual GPU setups some of the tweaks offered are just dummy and exist as traces of Desktops' GPU settings while ineffective , now that's clear so Intel GPU is the controller of this particular tweak , so if Intel refresh rate drops Nvidia's will drop accordingly and vice versa .

But then I waded through the DxDiag.txt you provided and found no traces for the Intel GPU , so I am not sure if you or the manufacturer disable it but in any case your fix may well be to install Intel's latest driver . If you find troubles doing that you should report back at least your laptop's brand and model number .

In that case you should start nagging your manufacturer for a fix , hopefully its still in warranty . (of course its software related but when in warranty they just consider customers requests)

As for gaming performance , dual mode usually improve gaming since it relays all windows overlays and gui to intel's gpu freeing more power for the gaming gpu , so maybe yea you just lose gsync but i assume there are few other syncs that should work for you .

There is an out of the box suggestion though you may try on your own if you wish , uninstall the NVidia driver then use "NVSlimmer" (a tool for customizing NVidia drivers and removing bloatware) to setup the driver again without "Optimus" support , then keep running at discreet , this might (and I am not sure) make the GPU believe its in desktop mode and start activating desktop features including refresh management .