This fix will hopefully further soothe the issues some have been reporting with blanking screens and GPU crashes.

After a multi-day investigation involving performance profiling and discussions with some subject matter experts (DirectX Discord Server), I believe what’s happening is a result of multi-plane outputs (MPOs, aka overlays) intersecting with VRR (variable refresh rate, FreeSync, GSYNC) and PDN’s use of multiple on-screen flip-model swapchains. Each swapchain was rendering unthrottled, and they were not synchronized.

The solution, I’m hoping, is that I’ve applied VSync to everything except the canvas. Only the canvas is latency sensitive enough to warrant using an unthrottled framerate (akin to NVIDIA’s “Fast VSync”).

The screen blanking issue appears to be a bug in NVIDIA’s GPU driver, but may also be a bug in the firmware of some displays. I have not yet been able to test this on an AMD GPU to see if it happens there, but I’m planning to do that next.

Change Log

Changes since 5.1.1 Beta (build 9102):

• Improved (hopefully fixed) the screen blanking issue that is happening mostly on systems with NVIDIA GeForce GPUs on displays with high refresh rates and/or VRR support (GSYNC/FreeSync)

Download and Install

This build is available via the built-in updater as long as you have opted-in to pre-release updates. From within Settings -> Updates, enable “Also check for pre-release (beta) versions of paint.net” and then click on the Check Now button. You can also use the links below to download an offline installer or portable ZIP.

You can also download the installer here (for any supported CPU and OS), which is also where you can find downloads for offline installers, portable ZIPs, and deployable MSIs.