New Graphics Card (RTX 3090) Gives Eyestrain

screengazer

I recently purchased an Nvidia RTX 3090, and once I got it set up, I find it gives me eyestrain!

Other than the graphics card, I have the exact same setup. Before, I was using an old MSI GT 710. My monitor is a Dell P2311H and I'm running Windows 10.

I've had issues in the past with eyestrain, and can usually tell within a few minutes of looking at a monitor that it will make me nauseated/headachy. I didn't expect that changing the graphics card could cause my issue to flare up, but sadly it has. It's not as bad as some systems I've used in the past, but it's pretty much a guaranteed headache and eye pain with some nausea after a few minutes.

Has anyone else run into this? If so, any recommendations? Worst comes to worst, I can always use my GT 710 for the monitor, and relegate my 3090 for computational workloads, but it'd be nice to have fancy graphics.

Thanks in advance.

Seagull

screengazer

So what's occurring here is temporal dithering. Even if you are looking at static image, your gpu is constantly varying its output. Its doing this to improve colour quality on shit monitors. Discrete GPUs have done this since forever, your GT 710 will be doing it too. Every card does it differently as far I have seen, unfortunately, the nature of your latest's card's dithering is causing you a problem.

You can possibly fix this. Changing the colour settings will change the dithering algorithm, and might make your card usable.

A second option, if you want to use your fancy card for gaming. Is to plug your monitor into your gt 710 but tell windows to use your gtx 3090 to do all the actual processing for any given application. There is a performance hit as you might expect, but it works.

https://www.howtogeek.com/351522/how-to-choose-which-gpu-a-game-uses-on-windows-10/

Lauda89

screengazer Did you just change the GPU or you did also some updates like W10 version and/or Nvidia driver?

glvn

screengazer I recently purchased an Nvidia RTX 3090, and once I got it set up, I find it gives me eyestrain!

try the combination "nvcolorcontrol.exe RGB 2" +win10(2004)
https://www.avsforum.com/threads/2020-lg-cx%E2%80%93gx-dedicated-gaming-thread-consoles-and-pc.3138274/page-21#post-59699820

at least when I using such a combination, the picture on the test smooth gradient changes on gf1030 (dithering may be disabled/changed)

eobet

Seagull I do not see the circled options.

Did Nvidia remove this after a few years?

However, in the resolution settings I did find this which I changed to 10bit full color now:

I've gone through three different monitors now (IPS, TN and VA) and two different presciption glasses and still have eye strain… which now that I think about it might have started a while after I got a 3090…

screengazer

Thanks for the detailed response, really appreciate it, I'll try this stuff out.

I've had issues with the NVIDIA Control Panel: as soon as I click out of it, it seems like Windows just reverts to its own settings. I've tried some of the solutions in this forum for this issue, but nothing has stuck yet. I'll check out the dynamic range settings, haven't experimented with those yet.

Interesting information about plugging the monitor into 1 GPU and processing through the other, that sounds like a strong candidate for me. Mostly the 3090 is for my job, but if I can use it for games too, that'd be great.

screengazer

Lauda89 That's a good point, when I installed the new card, it likely downloaded whatever the newest NVIDIA driver for it is.

screengazer

@Seagull Thanks for all the suggestions. I tried using both GPUs with the method you linked, but unfortunately it turns out that only works with 1 integrated and 1 discrete GPU. With 2 discrete GPUs, my only option was the one plugged into the monitor, and if I customized the settings in the NVIDIA control panel, those were ignored.

I got a new monitor, an MSI G24C4, which has relatively low brightness (VA panel). I'll see how it works with the 3090.

MPaz

screengazer Hi, how are you feeling now with your new monitor? I'm also having issues with RTX 3090 on 3 different monitors, but it seems to make it even worse if I change color output format from RGB Full to YCbCr422. So I guess GPU doesn't cause me problems (with RGB Full), but all of these monitors cause it for some other reason. However, it might also be that the GPU is causing the problems - just different color formats use different kind of dithering and thus the symtoms are different (eye strain only VS. eye strain + hard to focus). But... I'm not sure how to test whether it's the monitor or GPU.

Quad43

glvn Thanks, would you make a shortcut to the file? and then make it -> NvColorControl.exe RGB 2

glvn

Quad43 would you make a shortcut to the file

i use simple .cmd
echo y|NvColorControl.exe RGB 2

Quad43

Thanks, do you re-do this each restart or only once ever?

This definitely helped!

glvn

Quad43 Thanks, do you re-do this each restart or only once ever?

This definitely helped!

each restart…

But this is only one of the possible options 🙁

NvColorControl makes changes to the registry at:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\nvlddmkm\DisplayDatabase\xxxyyyzzz]

"DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,02,00,01,04,f3,00,00,00

and is consistent with the testing of temporal dithering switching on NV Quadro

In the ideal case, such a modification of the registry should lead to a constant result.

But in practice ...

sometimes the launch of the NvColorControl leads to an explicit improvement immediately
sometimes the launch of the NVControl leads to an improvement only after the preliminary removal of the registry branch \nvlddmkm\DisplayDatabase
sometimes helps first turn on & then turn off dithering through the NvColorControl
sometimes after the reboot, everything is fine without launching a NvColorControl (only with changes in the registry)
sometimes nothing helps 🙁

A lot of variables in this problem, I can point out the following:

exactly depends on the model of the GPU (gf1030 in my case)
exactly depends on the driver version (older is better)
exactly depends on the operating system version (win 7)
Perhaps depends on the fact that the any color profile is turned on
Perhaps it depends on the monitoring programs like speedfan
Perhaps depends on any program that switches video mode

sometimes-perhaps-sometimes-perhaps-sometimes-perhaps for the year and there is no stable result

I'm tired 🙁

my current configuration at work Radeon X1650 + MS driver 8.56.1.16 from OS + Win7 = 8 hours of good work

my current configuration at home 750ti + 361.43 + NvColorControl + win7 = acceptable result, sometimes

glvn

Quad43 You can fully describe your configuration?

1. Model GPU(gf3090?)

2. Full version of the operating system

3. Driver version

4. Monitor connection type DP, HDMI..

5. Color format RGB, YCbCr..

6. Brightness range: full or limited

p.s. I also used Ditherig 1.11 with HD630, but X1650 is better for me(with MS driver)

p.p.s Sorry for my terrible English

Quad43

Also interesting NvColorControl comes up on Malwarebytes with PUP.Optional.SearchProtect

Quad43

Does anyone know why NvColorControl helps so much? This combined with IntelPWMControl (can't figure out which one is helping). Strange if it's the latter given I have Intel properly disabled, removed from Device Manager etc and there's no PWM (based off slow-mo mode on iPhone)

MPaz

Quad43 Does it eliminate your symptoms completely? I'll also try this and would let you know.

AgentX20

Quad43 Does anyone know why NvColorControl helps so much?

I never ever got it to work ever... it always threw an Nvidia API error no matter the version of Win 10.

Quad43

MPaz I'd say makes 90% better. The best was using Ditherig 1.11 which I can never get running now 🙁

MPaz

Quad43 Which windows version are you using?

Quad43

Windows 10 latest

Quad43

Think I made an error by doing the very latest Windows update, 1.12 won't work now either, only 1.14 and it doesn't help as much

Sunspark

How did you determine that it doesn't work anymore?

Quad43

Sunspark It won't load - it gives me an error when trying to open it. Only 1.14 successfully runs 🙁