si_edgey Sometimes little 'blind tests' like this are handy to satisfy me that I'm not completely nuts.

Oh yeah definitely. I just have to dig out any of my >2015 PC's and I get symptoms within minutes. Also Xbox One S and Smart TV apps are a no go.

I'm interested to know what would happen if a G-Sync GPU outputs to a fixed panel (say a standard Dell monitor at 60hz) VS a G-Sync panel. Hopefully we find out all G-Sync enabled tech works fine. It would then suggest to me that dithering has been a ploy all along to prevent banding on poor quality (<8bit) panels.

    Hi,

    I'm curious about your theory that G-Sync might be the solution and would like to test it on a Desktop (if possible). You were mainly talking about laptops, so I was wondering if in your opinion buying a monitor with G-sync (native) might make a difference on a desktop, compared to a monitor without G-Sync?

    Current setup (that I can't use):

    • RTX 3090
    • Windows 10 (20H2)
    • Intel UHD drivers deleted from the Device Manager
    • BENQ EX3501R (8 bit) monitor - connected via DP to the GPU (also I have BENQ GL2450).

    Some background on my other tech:

    • PC: I don't have any computer setup that I could normally use. (Everything started with a Macbook Pro about 4 years ago.)
    • Phone: I'm using my Pixel 2 which is quite fine for a while, compared to a bunch of other phones I tried that made me feel the symptoms almost instantly. The last phone I tried was Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra which also causes me the symptoms immediately.
    • Smart TV: The last couple of years I was doing most of the learning on my Samsung (UE43MU6172U) Smart TV - watching online courses on Youtube and Internet apps, which is quite fine. However, watching movies with subtitles on Netflix app causes me the symptoms.

    Some background on my health:

    • Eyes: mild mixed astigmatism (since chilhood) and exophoria which was diagnosed a few months ago. Still trying to understand whether glasses with prisms will help me or not.
    • I'm also currently having issues with my thyroid, which is probably just a "side effect" as my blood tests were normal a couple of years back.

      MPaz I was wondering if in your opinion buying a monitor with G-sync (native) might make a difference on a desktop, compared to a monitor without G-Sync?

      Unfortunately it's literally impossible to say what will work for someone else, as there are so many variables in the tech alone, before we start thinking about brains! However the HP Omen mentioned above was the best experience I've had with a laptop in 10 years, so it's a promising start. Given you already have a very high end setup, it couldn't hurt to try a G-Sync monitor from a shop where you can easily return it? Out of interest, which brand is your RTX 3090?

      I'm actually thinking about ordering a Razer Blade 15 to try - the 2021 RTX 3070 QHD Advanced model has a G-Sync display with the new Nvidia Advanced Optimus tech I mention above - could be an interesting test.

      MPaz Eyes: mild mixed astigmatism (since chilhood) and exophoria which was diagnosed a few months ago

      Maybe check out some threads and posts from @martin who has a lot of interesting things to say about eye health.

            si_edgey
            Thanks for your answer 🙂 Okay, I might try a monitor with G-Sync and would let you know. I just thought that you could explain what theoretically that would change. As I understand, even though I connected my current monitor directly to Nvidia GPU, it still might use Intel iGPU for some tasks? And monitor with G-sync could avoid iGPU entirely?

            si_edgey Out of interest, which brand is your RTX 3090?

            It's ASUS TUF.

            si_edgey I'm actually thinking about ordering a Razer Blade 15 to try - the 2021 RTX 3070 QHD Advanced model has a G-Sync display with the new Nvidia Advanced Optimus tech I mention above - could be an interesting test.

            Great! Let us know what you'll find. I've seen someone having issues with RTX 30 GPUs, so would be good to know if it causes you symptoms or not.

            si_edgey Maybe check out some threads and posts from @martin who has a lot of interesting things to say about eye health.

            Thanks for your suggestion, but yes, actually, he's the reason why I decided to look for a specialist who could test me for heterophoria in the first place. So, I was following health related threads for a while as well.

                      MPaz As I understand, even though I connected my current monitor directly to Nvidia GPU, it still might use Intel iGPU for some tasks? And monitor with G-sync could avoid iGPU entirely?

                      Ah no, this isn't correct - if you're on a desktop machine and are connected directly to the discrete GPU (ie your 3090) then the Intel graphics on the processor will by bypassed entirely. Only if you were to connect to the HDMI output of your motherboard would the Intel graphics come into play.

                      In fact, if you go to device manager you shouldn't even see the Intel graphics listed - if they are showing then you can normally disable onboard graphics in the BIOS for peace of mind. :]

                      The confusion comes with laptop GPUs. On a laptop with an integrated GPU + discrete GPU, if additional horsepower is needed (for games / video editing etc) then the discrete GPU kicks into gear. However, every frame that the dGPU renders is passed to the integrated GPU to actually display it on the screen. So the iGPU is the one that has to work for you.

                      So in your circumstance, using a G-Sync monitor will only allow you to use variable refresh rates when gaming. But what we're hoping is that the actual hardware in a G-Sync product may eliminate the need for dithering / flickering that causes a lot of us issues.

                      On a G-Sync laptop, you can enable a hardware switch (MUX) which connects the display directly to the dGPU, bypassing the iGPU altogether, hence if (like me) you have a particular problem with iGPU drivers / hardware, then you can bypass it altogether for a working setup.

                      Our issues seem to come from bad combinations of:

                      • drivers
                      • the software you're running
                      • GPUs
                      • cables
                      • monitors

                      All of these can impact whatever 'flickering' it is that triggers your symptoms. So it's necessary to find the right combination that works for each individual. I'm curious as to whether I just struck it lucky with the HP Omen I bought and the planets aligned to make a usable machine, or whether G-Sync hardware communicates in such a way that it always eliminates the issues. Certainly, @highradio had the same results from his G-Sync machine which kicked off this new avenue to explore.

                      Let's keep fingers crossed for the latter. Not holding my breath though... 😉

                          si_edgey Thanks for the explanation!

                          I might try Dell AW2721D (G-Sync Ultimate) –
                          https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/77ac224f

                          However, I realized that it's 8 bits + FRC (10 bits). As I understand, FRC could also cause problems, so I wanted to ask if it's possible to disable FRC by just choosing 8 bits, or should I look for another G-Sync monitor, without FRC?

                          EDIT: In other forums I found that it can be disabled in Nvidia Control Panel. I will order this monitor in a couple of hours, so if you have any comments - let me know ASAP 😃

                              MPaz Good luck with it - there's no way to recommend anything at the moment as we're right at the beginning of this G-Sync adventure. Curious to hear how you get on with that. The only I'd say is that personally I'm yet to comfortably use a screen beyond 1080p FHD, so the QHD would put me off. That's purely anecdotal though, and I haven't tried many higher res screens yet.

                                  Unfortunately, I found that many people are having issues with AW2721D monitor and displays with NanoIPS in general, so for now I'll probably look into other IPS / VA alternatives with G-Sync.

                                  They say that the reason is:
                                  "Colors are oversaturated because it's using a DCI-P3 color space instead of sRGB and the KSF red phosphor in the backlight is way too vibrant, the red color is the main cause of eye strain."

                                  However, many people who decided to stick with NanoIPS monitors say that they got used to them in 1-2 weeks. So, I need to figure if I would be able to return it before ordering and then I might try it.

                                  https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/k0zuy2/aw2721d_eye_strain/

                                  https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/jn7u7v/s2721dgf_causing_intense_eye_strain_and_weirdness/

                                  EDIT: decided to avoid NanoIPS for now and ordered Asus ROG Swift PG259QN to try. I'll get it only in about 2 weeks, so will let you know as soon as I can.

                                  24 days later

                                  @highradio
                                  si_edgey Hey, so I just wanted to let you know that it's been around a week since I got the Asus PG259QNR monitor to test the Nvidia GPU + G-sync display theory. However, it still causes me the symptoms and I haven't found a way to make it better (still trying various things).

                                  DisplayPort + RGB Full – seem to be the best, but it still causes eyestrain. I guess the monitor itself might cause it?

                                  Using HDMI cable or ycbcr422 – seem to make it even worse - eye strain, immediately harder to focus, etc.

                                  Maybe someone could suggest, what are the key things to try on this setup? (RTX 3090; Asus
                                  PG259QNR; Win 10 20H2)

                                      I would like only to ask those ones who are trying setups that bypass Intel HD - I know that it's obvious question, but I want to know, have you tried ditherig program on Intel HD? Is it not making things better for you on Intel HD? It's not perfect but for me this program gives a lot of relief.

                                      2 months later

                                      si_edgey I did have a period where I started getting headaches again, and I noticed that dithering was periodically being enabled at seemingly random intervals, but probably because some request was made to the graphics drivers. I realised this was happening because my desktop background (colour #c84141) shows banding when everything is set up correctly, and no banding when my display is problematic for me

                                      If I understand you correctly, you have a banding on a desktop wallpaper from one solid color c84141 ?
                                      But how is it possible if only one color is used? ..or OS (Win 10) adds some post-processing/effects(??) that increases the number of color gradations?

                                        9 days later

                                        Currently in an impasse if I want to buy a gaming laptop with TN panel (because this used to never give me issues).
                                        Or if I should buy something like lenovo legion pro 5, it has dc dimming, gsync and AMD cpu.

                                        Altough the AMD cpu certainly makes me a bit nervous because I haven't seen many ways to disable dithering, while with Intel i've only needed the ditherig.exe application.
                                        Even though I haven't seen much improvement when using it or not.

                                        @si_edgey does on your Omen machine the main display still run on the igpu?
                                        I assume there is no real way to change this right?

                                          weasley I think that you don't have to worry about the AMD cpu because the dithering should not be linked to the CPU but instead with the GPU and monitor.
                                          So it's only a positive think to have an AMD CPU with ZEN 3 technology, it's just better then intel CPUs.

                                              Lauda89 because the dithering should not be linked to the CPU but instead with the GPU and monitor

                                              Ah, this isn't actually the case in most laptops @Lauda89 - only laptops which have G-Sync capabilities where you can switch so that the display is connected directly to the dGPU,

                                              In almost every other case, the frame buffer of the discrete GPU is passed to the integrated GPU to be displayed on the screen - what you're talking about is true for a desktop machine however. 😀

                                              @weasley - as you'll know, in this game it is literally impossible to make recommendations for other people - what works for one is by no means guaranteed to work for another as we're talking about a neurological condition here.

                                              I would, however, be tempted to suggest a G-Sync laptop as there is at least some fleeting evidence that it works for some, myself included (although I only tried the one laptop).

                                              weasley does on your Omen machine the main display still run on the igpu?

                                              The reason I bought the Omen laptop is because you can switch it to run exclusively on the discrete GPU and bypass the Intel GPU altogether. There are more details on this in the original post. G-Sync laptops allow you to switch to the dGPU only, but at the sacrifice of any kind of power saving possibilities.

                                                    si_edgey Thanks for your response.
                                                    Since its incredibly hard to find a TN panel gaming laptop anyway, my best bet would be a g-sync laptop with discrete option, which if i'm correct the legion 5 pro does offer.

                                                    I won't have the money for it until next month but I will let everyone know how the experience is for me.
                                                    Hopefully giving everyone some feedback how to solve the issues for them as well or perhaps not fixed at all.

                                                    I should notify however that after my 8th visit to an optician they finally noticed that my right eye is a bit slower to respond than my left eye and slightly moves to the left, meaning I have "double vision" this is something I don't notice myself because my eyes work really hard to fix this, and is even very hard to detect for opticians (and other doctors) but could according to the optician, have a high chance of being the reason my eyes get fatiqued or even painful, I have to go to an actual eye doctor to get this fully checked out, after its all 100% correctly measured and figured out, all I would need is a prism in my glasses and the vision should be restored to normal and my eyes wouldn't have to work as hard.

                                                    I am not sure how rare this issue is to be honest since I just heard about it but perhaps could be something to look out after if you already tried everything to fix eye fatique/strain but nothing helps.

                                                      Just returned my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro. Not as bad as PWM, or previous laptops like Surface Laptop, but still the temporal dithering eye strain after a normal workday. Eyes very dry and irritated even in the next morning.

                                                      I received my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro yesterday, managed to get one sooner, because they are very quickly running out of stock.
                                                      My first experience is pretty good, my eyes got a little fatiqued but it was also late and I was tired myself so that could've been a factor.

                                                      Also usually in the morning my eyes are very tired, this time I was completely fine.
                                                      For me so far this seems like a huge upgrade.

                                                        7 days later

                                                        I hope weasley comes back to chime in.

                                                        For me it was clear as day that I could not use the Lenovo Legion 5 Pro as a work laptop. Maybe I could use it few hours here and there, but not on consecutive days. I would find it hard to believe that if weasley is sensitive to the similar flicker or has similar eye strain problem that I have, that he would be able to use it.

                                                            5 days later

                                                            Bassiehetkoekje

                                                            Maxx

                                                            I've been testing it for awhile, at this point i'm not a 100% certain its the screens that cause my eye - fatique / strain.
                                                            Sometimes it looks like it does, and sometimes I can look at it just fine.

                                                            With that said, I do believe I have more rest on my eyes than my other laptop (y720 from lenovo).
                                                            I have made some changes however to what feels like makes it better, I keep playing with settings untill I feel like i've found the perfect setup.

                                                            Currently I have:

                                                            • Windows Nightlight on at 55% strenght.
                                                            • Graphics on discrete (this is default, but good to check in the bios and lenovo vantage)
                                                            • X-rite collor assistant is on "Rec.709" profile (I believe this helped the most), "default" seems too bright.
                                                            • Brightness of screen about 80%

                                                            If anyone has other settings they use i'd love to hear ofcourse.

                                                            So as for laptops this has been the most comfortable so far, but like Maxx said, I'm not sure if i'm actually sensitive to screens like some of you are or if there are other factors at play here.

                                                                dev