GTX 1070

Kray

Some update - I've pulled the trigger and bought a (used) GTX 1070 graphics card. I figured, since I have a 50-50 chance of getting eye strain, I dont want spend the full price on it, since I dont know if I can use it yet. This was about a week ago. I am installed the GTX 1070 on my home PC, which is a PC that can use without any eye strain whatsoever (before installing the 1070).

Initial findings, unfortunately yes, I do feel some eye strain. I'm still testing and experimenting, for example using analog signal to my monitor instead of digital (hoping it would "flush" whatever it is that is causing eye strain). Since this graphics is installed in my home PC, I can only use it sporadically during weekdays. Will update more after I have managed to use it longer.

diop

Kray The one thing I tested which completely threw me was renting a cloud gaming service (Shadow PC) basically your own W10 desktop in the cloud with a dedicated GPU, I think it was a Quadro but can't remember the model number.

Either way, on my known good decade old system, using this 'VM' gave me symptoms within 30 minutes, either goofing around on the desktop or playing the games. Verbatim to using a physical card in front of me. I'm more and more convinced it is a pure software issue. Either in the drivers/VBIOS, or W10, or all 🙄

1NGIBITOR

AgentX20

Yep, eye strain is still there. I'm using rtx 2080 right now and it's rather tolerable with my old monitor Asus pa249q but far from comfortable. New monitors like Gigabyte ad27qd and Acer predator xb271hu + rtx 2080 make my eyes burn. My vision is damaged because of these pc build tests but still i don't want to return to 970 (very old and slow for gaming). Maybe there will be driver updates that resolve the issue.

AgentX20

1NGIBITOR Yep, eye strain is still there. I use rtx 2080 right now and it's rather tolerable with my old monitor Asus pa249q but far from comfortable.

I figured that was going to be the case... (dammit).

I guess the new AMD GPUs are our only hope for anything better than an early 970.

JTL

AgentX20 I guess the new AMD GPUs are our only hope for anything better than an early 970.

AgentX20 I don't think this is going to work for WIndows and/or Mac, at least easily, But based on what I know it might be theoretically possible to modify the AMD graphics drivers under Linux to disable any dithering in place.

Unfortunately before we even consider that some other things need to happen first.

AgentX20

JTL I don't think this is going to work for WIndows and/or Mac

I know... I just live in hope that they might flick some magical switch and we're back with usable video cards. Of course it's wishful thinking, but I refuse to believe I'm going to be stuck forever with my ageing 970 card.

1NGIBITOR

AgentX20 Is there no way out? It seems to me that the main culprit is dithering. So there may be a workaround like buying a true 10 bit monitor. No need for internal videocard dithering and no monitor 8 bit + FRC dithering either. But I haven't found many of them and they are quite costly + they usually have 4k resolution which i don't like because modern videocards are still not ready for such amount of pixels.

P.S. In my opinion if modern cards use internal pipeline bitdepth 10 bit then disabling of dithering is not an option anyway because if we do it we will see horrendous banding instead.

diop

1NGIBITOR Unfortunately MacOS still dithers even with a 10 bit monitor.

Dithering as I understand it is the effect of creating the 'illusion' of more colors than can actually be displayed on the panel. You would think logically we could just select "limited color pallete" and therefore dithering wouldn't be needed on a 6-8 bit display.

AgentX20

1NGIBITOR Is there no way out?

Not one that anyone here has been able to come up with...

1NGIBITOR It seems to me that the main culprit is dithering.

I'm inclined to think the same. However it seems these video cards are doing dithering by default and cannot be fully turned off. And then the displays cause eye strain - perhaps they're dithering by default as well.

Or it could be something else entirely...

1NGIBITOR

diop And what about win 7. Has anyone tested 1070 (or any 10 series card) with win 7?

JTL

1NGIBITOR I haven't done extensive testing yet, but as far as I know the 1070 is a problem even before Windows boots (In the BIOS)

reaganry

i think nvidia intentionally forces crappy dithering on their consumer cards to get pro video production people to buy quadro. they also make it hard to switch between types of cards

JTL

reaganry That might make sense, but someone on the Nvidia developer forum reported temporal dithering on a Quadro card of the same generation as the 1070.

Seagull

reaganry

Honestly, I think they do it to improve colour replication

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/1082681/geforce-drivers/is-it-possible-to-quot-port-quot-dithering-from-nvidia-x-server-to-geforce-driver-/1/

People on this thread are raving about how they want it on to reduce banding.

reaganry

JTL i bet the quadro dithering is less crappy and can be turned off 🙂

reaganry

Seagull yeah, the dithering is a downscaling thing required for accurate color reproduction on 6 and 8-bit monitors; without it, you get the banding. the pro tv people all use fancy 10-bit monitors & are willing to pay extra & forgo gaming speed to have the computer to spit out undithered 10-bit. I think they wont use HDMI either.

JTL

reaganry From what I remember, [they] (the person trying to do PCoIP) had problems no matter what drivers were being used, etc.

Kray

So I bought a used GTX 1070. Tried it for about 2 weeks, unfortunately its a no go. I get eye strain. My eyes burns, with muscle twitches and all. This sucks. I tried connecting to my monitor using HDMI cable - eye strain. Next i tried using DVI port with a DVI to VGA converter and use VGA cable to my monitor - eye strain also. I tried using HDMI port with a HDMI to VGA converter and using VGA cable to my monitor - eye strain again. So my theory (in another thread) on how analog signal can flush out the thing that is causing us eye strain doesnt work with PC. https://ledstrain.org/d/483-android-tv-box-eye-strain-and-solution-for-pc-also/17

I tried the oldest driver I can find (from the CD), no go, and I tried the latest driver, also eye strain. I gave up after about 2 weeks.

I read the thread about GTX 970 and how AgentX20 can use his 970 without a problem. So I bought a used GTX 970, exactly his model, which is Gigabyte G1 Gaming model. I have been using this GTX 970 for a about a week now, and thankfully I can use it without eye strain. Phew. Thanks AgentX20. At least my home PC gets a bit of graphics upgrade from its GTX 760.

KM

Kray How did you know you were buying the right v1.0 version (e.g. with no Samsung memory as @AgentX20 said), could you see this on pictures or were you just lucky?

Kray

Yikes, there are different versions of the Gigabyte G1 GTX 970 graphics card? I must have missed that. What I understood from the thread is that different GTX 970 cards (from different makers) can cause eye strain. That's why I bought the exact model used by AgentX20, at least I know this model can be used by someone who suffers from eye strain like me. I didn't know there were 2 versions of it...and I dont know which version I got, its already installed. I guess luck is on my side this time.

AgentX20

You can't easily tell which version of the Gigabyte Gaming Edition 970 1.0 hardware you have. You need to install it and use something like GPUID to identify what memory is on the card. Of course this all assumes my theory about which ones work (Hynix) and which ones don't (Samsung) hold true, and it's not some weird BIOS variation.

I noticed the cooling fins are slightly different between the two cards I have at present (one good - Hynix, and one bad - Samsung) but it's very subtle. Perhaps it's evidence of different sub-manufacturers?

Glad you got a good one Kray. Maybe you could run CPUID up and let us know what memory you have on your card?

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