JTL
When I watch this on Eink, I can see the areas that will cause the camera to go into the pattern before it happens. confirmation of both methods. I would get rid of that background, the perimeter is dithering hell
Nvidia Dithering
a month later
just Trying out lubuntu linux + 1060 gpu. Is anyone here swearing by linux these days? which dist/drivers? still able to disable dithering?
Gurm If your using the output port on the Nvidia card it's 99.5% the Nvidia's fault. If the Intel graphics is disabled in the BIOS it's 100% the Nvidia cards fault.
Wanna take some GPU-Z VBIOS dumps for me and send them my way? 
(Find someone else to do it if you don't want to hurt your eyes. I understand)
YAIS.
Gurm Uh oh.
I know the dithering is 100% the Nvidia GPU with a bad 9xx or 10xx card on a desktop but I wonder how the situation is with laptops, since as you know, the final output is through the Intel card regardless if the Nvidia card is being used.
My brother has an HP Zbook 15 G3 with Intel graphics and an Nvidia Quadro M1000M (from the 9xx series), and what's interesting is by default it uses Optimus, but in the BIOS there is an option to just use the Nvidia card. I tried said option and in device manager the Intel card seems to be completely "disconnected" from the running system, although since it was running the Optimus driver Windows just loaded the standard VGA driver, refusing to use the Nvidia one.
12 days later
2 months later
- Edited
Another data point...
I normally run a Gigabyte 970 G1 Gaming card with no problems at all. Having failed with 1070, 1080, and 980Ti cards, I realised that the 980 card is the same chipset and was released at the same time as the 970. I thought to myself... maybe I can get a slight performance uplift?
I'm now trialing a Gigabyte 980 G1 Gaming card. It's very early days, but I think I'm detecting low levels of discomfort with it.
Both my good 970 and this suspect 980 are 1.0 versions from the same manufacturer, released around the same time with supposedly the same chipset.
AgentX20 Check the VBIOS using GPU-Z?
https://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/
If you could find a bad 970 (SOMEONE NEEDS TO DO THIS), it would be interesting to compare the VBIOS version of the "good 970" vs the "bad 970"? Then I have some more ideas on top of that.
Yeah, I'll check out the 980 BIOS versions and see if there's anything there.
9 days later
OK - so I've now tried two Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX980 cards (both v1.0 hardware).
They differ on the memory front - one is Hynix and one Samsung. Both have very early bios versions.
Both give me low levels of eye strain, which is hugely annoying for this is supposedly the SAME chip as my 'works-great' 970 card.
I'll spend some time shortly, and push both cards up to the newest BIOS version in case that helps. Both updates report they "improve compatibility with some monitors". Quite what that does I dunno. But I suspect it's probably a bad thing for folks like us here. Still worth a crack.
Do they DEFINITELY give you eye strain? I find I tend to get a small amount of nocebo affect when I know something may cause me issues. It's part of why I don't like reading this site too much
person says x causes them issues
It immediately plays with my mind and I think it may be an issue for me
I bought a TV that is LED backlit a while back too and because I knew it was LED I would get low levels of strain/headache but it turns out that was just me imagining it and it's actually 100% fine. I think this is a big issue for all of us and makes things even harder to figure out.
Did you try some of the oldest drivers to see if they're fine and what OS are you using? (I assume you did)
980 was at the forefront though so maybe they started the dithering in that first and just implemented it on all the others later on.
Is there no way to contact Nvidia and get them to give us details on changes they have made to the output in recent years + when, where, and what?