They are not all created equal. Built a machine for my son's friend using an MSI GTX 970. Crisp, clean, no temporal dithering. No eyestrain. Just pure awesome. Rebuilt my own desktop - finally giving up on my venerable GTX670 - with a Zotac GTX970. It's ... not horrible but hard to look at. Not instant headache like an AMD would be but not great. It could just be that my old monitors (2011-era LED HP 23") are not up to the task of dealing with the new card. Or maybe Zotac just isn't as great as MSI. The Zotac literature says they use some kind of "4k on a 1080 display" technology which sounds suspiciously like dithering, so that might be at play as well. Not sure if that's a Zotac thing or an nVidia thing but it sounds terrible. I'm trading the Zotac in for a (much better) EVGA GTX970. I went with the 970 because the new 10x0 architecture doesn't have Temporal Dithering turned off by default (and we don't have an nVidia version of "ditherig"). Thoughts? I've never had issues with these monitors (the pair of HP's) before, but I could always swap for a Dell or two until I find just the right thing to buy.

Hi - I'm struggling with a 1070 and haven't found any evidence of anyone else having problems with the 10 series. vs my old 970 which is A-OK. I cannot nail down the problem unfortunately. Where have you seen information about "because the new 10x0 architecture doesn't have Temporal Dithering turned off by default (and we don't have an nVidia version of "ditherig")."??

AgentX20 For all I know he could be basing "because the new 10x0 architecture doesn't have Temporal Dithering turned off by default (and we don't have an nVidia version of "ditherig" off of your post.

Yep the thought occurred to me but I thought I'd ask in case there was some other info out there I'd not seen.

AgentX20 As of now I have no idea of any such info.

The EVGA is also temporal dithering. I can actually see the flicker. It could be ... I don't know. I read in this forum that the 10x0 series was bad. Could have been your post. I'm switching back to the 670... My eyes hurt. Bad.

I'm going to have to repurchase a 670. Ugh.

Popped in a 730 I had laying around. Instantly better. I wonder if they changed something halfway through the run of 970's?

GeForce GTX 970

JTL

Gurm It's certainly possible.

If you found two 970's of the exact same model (Might not be a requirement but I wouldn't risk it) you could try backing up and flashing/comparing the firmware between the two 🙂

Gurm

So... after a few false starts due to the motherboard drivers being lousy... I'm running the EVGA 970 SSC+

JTL Yeah, I have only found one that works well and it's an MSI 970, a pricey one compared to most (it's the XTreme Gaming model, like $300). I might pick one up just to see if that is a cure, because the extra $100 could be worth it for long term happiness.

Gurm

So I'm ok temporarily using the 730. My old card was a 670 SC+ which was insanely fast for 2012. The 8 series was mobile only, which means if I can't use the 9 series I can always drop back to the 7 series. This is complicated, however, because I know I can use SOME 9 series cards, the 950 for example was ok but not any faster than a good 7 series or even the 670.

I could easily sell this 970 SSC I'm using now and pick up a 780Ti and not lose any money on the transaction. Or I could suck it up, drop all the way back to the 670 (re-purchase it from whence I sold it), and call it a day.

It's frustrating because I simply assumed all nVidia cards were not terrible. But this is my first foray into 9x0, and it's not been pretty.

Thoughts?

KM

My thoughts are we must buy and test current cards to see if they work.
Maybe newer cards have hardware features that some older cards don't have? I'd compare the whole feature set. Although cards with the same number should have the same features...
If there's no spec difference, it could mean different manufacturers use different output methods. Maybe there's hope that they use them consistently in all their cards.
The GeForce 730 you can use, is it from MSI, too?

Gurm

KM No. The 730 is EVGA. So was my 670 SC+.

Gurm

KM I agree. I wish I had more disposable income to play around. I might convince my son's friend to lend me his MSI (in exchange for my higher-clocked EVGA) as a test. But that doesn't prove anything, it might only be that individual card that is ok.

The thing that is very concerning is that we're looking at a substantive change in output within a single card generation.

AgentX20 has a 970 that he says is ok... wonder what brand/model it is?

Slacor

KM My thoughts are we must buy and test current cards to see if they work.

Unfortunately, at some point someone has to buy expensive equipment and see if it works.
The best way is to have companies / people who do this for a living (reviewing hardware) review to see if it's bad or not.

Problem is, we've yet to determine what reliably causes the issue. PWM, Dithering are big candidates as well as others. But then what causes the dithering? Motherboard? Graphics unit? Montitor? Some of the above?

There have been some ideas already that haven't really panned out so I'm interested in hearing any ideas that I could setup / host.

In any case, The GeForce GTX 750Ti works well for me (dithering disabled under linux) with a 8-bit monitor 🙂

AgentX20

My 970 is a Gigabyte G1 Gaming edition. No problems at all with it, but then the first and ONLY video card I've had (non-screen) problems with is my Gigabyte G1 Gaming 1070 card.

It's a mighty expensive exercise buying video cards and monitors and having to sell them second hand. Here in New Zealand store return policies don't really support "'cause it gives me headaches" although I was lucky in the case of my former Acer XB271 IPS monitor (flicker free, low blue etc but still gave me headaches) that I managed to return for near full purchase price.

I'm still stuck not knowing if ALL Nvidia 1070/1080 cards are unusable by me.

Gurm

AgentX20 I'm guessing it's "all", since I'm finding that 970's are in the "some" category but 6x0 and 7x0 cards are in the "none". Which sucks for you (and me).

Gurm

I'm currently investigating if the OS or Motherboard drivers have any bearing on this. They SHOULDN'T. but since the cables and monitors are the same...

Harrison

hey Slacor which monitor exactly?

Slacor

Harrison https://ledstrain.org/d/133-viewsonic-va2455sm-24-inch

ViewSonic VA2455sm

Be careful not to get the newer model ViewSonic VA2465smh as JTL reports it's 6-bit + FRC

KM

I recently bought an MSI GeForce GT 710 and use it with Windows 10. Seems it's usable so far. I wonder if one of those forced upgrades is going to break anything. Probably just a matter of time.

Gurm

KM, no it turns out that you just have to buy one of the NICE ones. Zotac and EVGA were both dreadul on my eyes, but MSI is just fine! (It also lights up red and has wicked-looking heatpipes...)

Sunspark

I don't have any of these cards, but I can comment on a feature that might be worth considering.

For HTPC use, the 960 is the only one of the 950, 960, 970 and 980 series that has both HDMI 2.0 and hardware h.265 encoding and decoding.

si_edgey

This is interesting reading. I recently built a computer for home using an 8-bit Viewsonic VA2855SMH monitor and an EVGA GTX560 1GB card. This computer is causing me eyestrain whereas the same setup with a crappy old Asus GT 610 card doesn't.

@Gurm - did you adjust to the EVGA card in the end? I would love to test an MSI GTX 560 for example, but the problem is the process of testing this 'just to see' can lead me to having a migraine for several days! This is what stops me experimenting too much as I just can't handle them any more.

I think I'll pick up an MSI 750ti to see if that changes things..

degen

I went from GTX 650 -> 970 hooked up to my plasma TV. I thought at first the 970 looked a little "noisier" but since I have not had any symptoms I've chalked that up to me looking for a change when I switched cards.

I got a reminder recently about how vital the GPU is in my eye-friendly chain when I hooked up a 3rd-gen Apple TV to my plasma TV and started to get all the classic symptoms within 30s. With my 970 viewing time on that TV, which is my most eye-friendly screen, is only limited by the natural fatiguing of my eyes over 4-5 hours. (More and more it looks like dithering is more problematic for me than PWM. My iPhone 6s which has no PWM becomes problematic within 15-30s which is much worse than many PWM screens which I use briefly out of necessity)

si_edgey

Thanks for the info @degen - out of interest what brands were your 650 and 970? And yes, it sounds like temporal dithering is at least part of your problem - it is my entire problem!

@Slacor - this forum is really great, a brilliant way of communicating. Quick idea - would it be possible to have some custom info from each user below their posts? This would include what they believe their problem to be (Blue Light / PWM / Temporal Dithering Sensitivity), their current working setup and maybe even a link to a post they've made detailing their solution so far? The reason for this is that a monitor solution for someone suffering from PWM sensitivity would be different to the solution for someone with TD sensitivity and vice versa, so it would be easier to focus on solutions that are applicable to you.

Slacor

si_edgey would it be possible to have some custom info from each user below their posts?

If you hover over a username, it displays info about that user. You can "write something about yourself" in that by going to your Profile (Username -> Profile)

degen

si_edgey My GTX 650 "Ti Boost" was Asus, The 970 is MSI

Jerry

Slacor Very useful feature. I just added my usable setting in my profile.