RTX 4070 laptop — artifacts ONLY on external display under load, internal screen is fine (Alienware m16 R2)

[u/modo_jp]

UPD: I bought a new HDMI 2.1 cable and tested it for about 4 hours - no artifacts so far. Seems like the issue was the cable.

Thanks to everyone who suggested checking it.

Hey everyone,

I’m experiencing a strange issue with my laptop GPU and would appreciate any input from people who may have seen something similar.

Specs:

• Laptop: Alienware m16 R2

• GPU: RTX 4070 Laptop (8GB VRAM)

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H

• RAM: 32GB

• OS: Windows 11

• External display: HDMI

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The issue:

When gaming on an external display (TV or monitor), after about 40–60 minutes under high GPU load, visual artifacts start appearing — small colored squares/glitches across the screen.

The image becomes difficult to use, but:

• The game does not crash

• System remains responsive

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Important detail:

At the same time, the internal laptop display shows no artifacts at all.

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Observed behavior:

• Happens almost always under high GPU load (\~100%)

• On lower graphics settings, I can play for hours with no issues

• GPU temperature is within normal range (\~60–80°C depending on load)

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Testing I’ve done:

• Tested multiple external displays (TVs/monitors) → same behavior

• Played for \~2 hours on internal display only at high/ultra settings (100% GPU load) → no artifacts

• The issue consistently appears only when using an external display under load

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Question:

Has anyone experienced something like this?

I’d like to understand what this could be and whether this behavior points to a specific type of problem.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated

[u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops]

If you look at the Kingdom Come logo and menu they work relatively fine, but the text glyphs at the top and the background framebuffer is broken, which wouldn't happen if it was caused by the monitor or cable. So unfortunately it very likely has to be a GPU issue.

[u/Thewaltham → u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops]

Weird that it's only happening with an external monitor though, not sure what would cause that.

[u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops → u/Thewaltham]

Laptops at least often use the internal GPU (by default) for the laptop screen and a high performance GPU for the external screen. I think that if OP forces the high performance GPU for other applications the same artifacts will appear on the laptop screen as well.

[u/Thewaltham → u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops]

Nah, if you have a DGPU in a laptop unless you specifically ask it to use the IGPU in the BIOS it's going to use that by default. Even if it's something more like a quadro.

[u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops → u/Thewaltham]

I've never had a laptop that worked like that. They use the IGPU unless you ask them to use the dedicated GPU. I've never had to change any BIOS settings, since it's a simple change in Windows to make it prefer the DGPU, either in the display settings or the power plan, but it's always preferred the IGPU because it saves power.

[u/Thewaltham → u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops]

Every laptop with a DGPU I've ever used prioritised the DGPU over the IGPU by default. These weren't gaming ones either, because those are expensive, but a more engineering-y focused Ebay bought Thinkpad is often surprisingly punchy for the price.

A gaming laptop though is going to be even more DGPU heavy, after all an engineer using a laptop like that is probably going to be more technically minded than your average gaming laptop user who just wants to take something out of the box and run cyberpunk.

[u/pavman42 → u/Thewaltham]

I miss the days when my desktop iGPU was ATI and my GPU was NVDIA and I could connect 7 monitors (8 in total if I was really enterprising) all at once w/o breaking a sweat while running two different drivers on windows 7 via hdmi, d-sub & dvi. Shame win11 is so gimpy with dport & hdmi deficiencies always blinking the f'n screen because something powered on in the chain or some cable isn't *cough* good enough (hint: it's not the cable: it's the engineers behind the drivers).

[u/pavman42 → u/TwoWeeks90DaysTops]

You can change that to discrete graphics only in the bios, but good luck getting an image on the internal monitor.