JTL, it's entirely likely that all Plasmas bother you. All plasmas are a little flickery. It turns out that this type of flickering isn't really something that bothers me (it's similar to an old tube tv, after all) nor is the field-dithering (dancing rows of pixels) something that bothers me. BUT I would imagine that many others are bothered by it, in the same way that I'm bothered by FRC/Temporal.

Good luck!

  • JTL replied to this.
  • KM likes this.

    Yes, I believe plasmas use temporal dithering to display different colors. I saw them flicker especially when the screen was white. Looked like 50/60 Hz. In any case, pretty low frequency. There's a strong contrast between the different frames (maybe pure black).

    KM - Plasmas absolutely use temporal dithering but it's a radically different kind which has never bothered me. Modern LCD's use per-pixel temporal dithering, in which each individual pixel is strobed between for example red and blue to make purple (a vast oversimplification). On the plasma, they have entire fields with moving rows of pixels. You'll get two adjacent pixels that will change color inside a subfield. Get close to one displaying different grayscales and you can see the rows of marching pixels almost like a very tiny boardwalk marquee. It happens - in spite of the plasma refresh rate being around 800hz - at about 50-60hz. It was designed that way to maintain compatibility with tube tv's and was never changed. I suspect it's yet another "prevent burn in on the plasma chambers" feature.

    I find it acceptable. Perhaps not as acceptable as a good soft CCFL backlight, but acceptable nonetheless. I know others absolutely don't.

    I <3 plasma

    I make sure to turn off "Pixel Orbiting" and that reduces the flicker somewhat. It's not perfect, but it's the closest I've come to looking at paper.

    Makes me wonder how I would react to CRT. My problems started after CRT's were on the way out, and I never thought to check.

    BTW I hooked just hooked my 2nd Gen Apple TV to my Panasonic plasma. Eye pain within a couple of minutes. Back to the PC.

    • JTL replied to this.

      I'm absolutely fine with Plasma TVs. Many LED screens are no go.

      Monitor wise - old CFL backlights are A-OK and some LED screens (e.g. late 2013 MBPro). Others, including flicker-free low blue IPS screens are no good, and I've tried a VA panel with no success.

      And per my comments above - my new 1070 card on an old CFL screen is an absolute NO GO for me. My older 970 and all previous video cards have been A-OK. Even having the 1070 on an OK screen showing the desktop in my peripheral vision is headache inducing.

      So no I fear not being able to buy a new TV, monitor OR video card... not a fun prospect. And yes I've had my eyes check and now wear glasses but the problems persist.

        AgentX20 You aren't alone. Some bad screens are vaguely tolerable, and others kill me if they are even in my peripheral vision. I thought I was crazy for a long time.

          Gurm What's unusual here though is that after nigh on 10 years of use I KNOW the screen is OK. This is all about the video card causing such disturbance.

          • Gurm replied to this.

            AgentX20 There are multiple issues at play with new cards, it's really sad. I have a laptop that when I update to the latest Intel drivers the screen becomes INSTANTLY painful to me. But drop back to the drivers from last fall? It's flawless. There's bullshit happening.

              5 days later

              I used to have some test patterns to check for temporal dithering (will look for it today). It would be nice if we could correlate the presence of temporal dithering to different driver version or GPU iterations.

              Maybe we would see something when using a strong magnifying glass and a slow motion camera (mode)? Somewhere I read the temporally dithered pixels' colors may flicker/change at 30 Hz, which is pretty slow.

              2 months later

              Updating my situation...

              I've been using my original Gigabyte G1 Gaming 970 card very happily on my Dell IPS 2407 monitor.

              I've tried putting the Gigabyte G1 Gaming 1070 back in my machine (the kids had been using it happily of late), and although it's less 'bad' on my eyes than reported originally, presumably due to driver updates, it's still no good. It leaves me feeling queasy and sorta green round the gills. After I put the 970 back in everything goes back to normal.

              Today I've gotten an ASUS Strix 1080 card to trial. My initial tests show it causes the same problems as the 1070 - and leaves me feeling pretty rotten after using it. It's not as bad as some laptops I've tried including my wife's newish Acer/Nvidia 950 system, but it's still not looking very promising. This strongly suggests there's something very different going on in the new Pascal architecture output rendering compared with the previous generation of cards - and these are the first video cards I've found that cause me problems.

              Add to that list both sizes of iPad Pro models that had to be sent back to Apple as they too left me feeling 'odd', leaving me on the sorta-OK iPad Air 2/iPhone 6S combo. And, then there's the two new high spec IPS and VA panels I tried and couldn't use, and had to return.

              So I'm now resigned to having to give this generation of 10-series Nvidia cards a complete miss (as well as new iPads, and most screens - something that is very difficult to test). For someone in IT and who likes his flight-sims, being stuck on on old CFL backlight screens and last-gen video cards is a very bitter pill to swallow.

              I cannot precisely pin down my problem(s). I know PWM can contribute to the effects I experience but there's none active on my screen at high brightness levels (offset in the video card settings). On a problematic screen I had for a time, it had low blue light controls that I tried with no real improvement in symptoms. That same screen had no PWM and very high refresh rates but they didn't help. I've gotten my eyes checked and wear glasses but then I'm OK on some screens and not others, glasses or not so that's seemingly not the root cause. Then there's the 10 series Nvidia cards... that make me wonder - just what is it that they're doing to cause these problems?

              Although we can't be sure Nvidia didn't make any deleterious changes between GM204 and GM200, the GTX 980 Ti is similar in performance to the 1070 and is going used for a similar or slightly less price. If you are gaming it's 6 GB of VRAM will handle next-gen console ports and high-res displays much better than the 970.

              Yep I'll be keeping my eyes peeled for second hand 908Ti cards, but for the last while they've been rather rare on the second hand market.

              AgentX20 - odds are your problem is dithering, or the as-yet-unknown "new compositing issue" that I've been seeing with Intel, Windows 10 Anniversary Edition, and even some nVidia cards.

              I discovered that only very high-end 970's work for me. MSI Gaming is fine, but eVGA and Zotac (which are both the shrunken die) are not. The newest generation I can use low-end nVidia cards on is 7x0.

              I'm starting to wonder if they didn't do a mid-generation die-change. Both the Zotac and eVGA turn in higher base clocks and are much cheaper than the MSI. It could be that the later Maxwell cards share something in common with the Pascal cards. Thoughts?

              So I'm going to buy a used 980 Ti because I'm getting pretty nervous about the future of GPUs for us. I put an ad up and I have being offering me a Galax HOF, two have offered an Asus Strix OC, and one has offered an MSI Lightning Edition. I'm thinking of going for the MSI because it has a higher power envelope than the other cards because it was designed for extreme OC. I have no idea if any of that has a bearing at all but I'm left guessing here.

              EDIT: I found a brand new one from a legit source for a good price. Very tempted.

              My new GeForce GT 710 is not as good as I initially thought. Looking at the screen for longer periods of time didn't feel as good as with my old Quadro card. I blamed Windows updates for it, and for some days I tried Linux, which has its own still unsolved eye strain reasons. But now after installing Windows 7 SP1 my eyes still didn't relax. So I put my Quadro card back in - much better instantly.

              I'd grab an MSI 980. I was even looking at a 780 today and a 980 in a year when the prices drop... I am also very concerned about the future of GPU's for our eyes. 🙁

              dev