With the machine in any of the consoles (ALT-F1 through to ALT-F6) after the screen blanker timeouts, instead of blanking, the screen flickers.
What I've observed is that if no one logs in after booting up then the screen will blank normally. but if any user (including root) logs in then
the consoles will flicker after screen blanker timeout. In X11 no flickerin occurs in a terminal like xterm. But if one exits X1 or even if one does crl-alt-fx to get to console from X11 then the flickering happens after the timeout. I haven't touched rc.M where /bin/setterm is used.

I've searched for this topic but seems like no one has reported anything like this problem

the machine is an ASUS X555b with AMD Radeon R5 graphics.
thanks!

I've been having something similar happen on my intel graphics based laptop for a while now. I ended up turning off dpms and commenting out the setterm in rc.M to avoid the issue, though for me it was when restoring the display rather than activating the saver that sends my screen absolutely mental.

Thanks I'll try that as well. Then do you not use any screen blanker for console?
I was wondering if there was an alternative to setterm, not that I think setterm is the cause.