Recently I bought a new RTX 3070TI and I didn't notice it at first, I thought my screen was just looking different, and my text wasn't crisp, but I realized I am getting maddening eye strain and pain all the way through my head and back.

Digging up into the problem, I have realized that it is due to a disgusting technology called "Temporal Dithering". Is there any way to disabling this disgusting thing?

I am extremely sensitive to PWM. It's sadistically funny that I actually sold my Samsung tu7000 TV which is a PWM abuser and a living nightmare to PWM sensitive people to buy this card. I paid an amount of my currency worth something like paying $24,000 to buy this card (and that is without it being warranted or any way of returning it).

My monitor is an extremely old LG FLATRON W2261VP which I have been using for probably like 20 years, and it's one of the only screens I can sit behind for hours without eye strain. I can not believe that now such an expensive GPU is giving me the same disgusting symptoms on this same screen.

I don't even have any money left to buy a new screen, but I saw in another post here that, that is not helping either.

Anyone has any experience with this issue? Any possible suggestions? Any cheap monitor suggestions that would neither have PWM nor drive me blind with Temporal Dithering?

I cannot believe I have to suffer this much for actually having sharp eyes :/ 🙂

Right now I wish I could find the grave of the people that invented PWM and Temporal dithering, revive them and kill them all over again :/ These 2 technologies are some of the most disgusting technologies man has ever made.

    Welcome to the party. I enjoyed the humour in your post. I agree about the inventors. Not really sure why they need to keep pushing the envelope and use trickery to make something look better.

    Most of us here are surviving with old systems and software. Hopefully there will be a solution in the future. If you can't return it at least open support tickets with the manufacturer. Play dumb and just say it gives you eye strain when your last one didn't. The more people complain you never know we may get a new button to disable dithering. Also Check out the eye patching thread.

    There are some registry changes that should disable dithering but I've no way to test if it is working:

    https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/nvidia-and-dithering-controls-how-to-enable.436621/

    Personally I have treid a 1660s which is ok for me, no issues. Same screens and same cables, same entire computer (except graphics card) and 2060 and 3060ti both give me issues.

    However what has helped me a little bit is setting the windows color management to defaults, ensure its set to SRGB and if you have an icc profile for your screen use it, otherwise set a windows default.

    https://pcmonitors.info/articles/using-icc-profiles-in-windows/

    I get 'migraines' from these cards (I do not believe they are migraines but doctors say so) and a dizzy sensation, however it has gotten much better when using the above settings at defaults and using Flux at 5000k,

    I also set my benq2480gw to a lower blue light and calibrated it by eye using the langom and rtings calibration websites.

    To confirm though, with my 1660s which is totally fine for me to use in all times, I did not have any color management settings configured.

    Still not a cure, these cards are doing something that is affecting people but the problem is the vast majority of users are not affected so nothing will be done or taken seriously by anyone 🙁

    BloodyHell619 Anyone has any experience with this issue? Any possible suggestions? Any cheap monitor suggestions that would neither have PWM nor drive me blind with Temporal Dithering?

    Short answer is based on my current understanding of the mechanism involved of the GPU output pipeline, trying with various monitors won't help if the GPU is fucking things up internally.

      I'm curious, this topic always intrigued me. I've seen so many people claim temporal dithering is the cause of their issues but no verification in form of video to show it.

      This tool might help you remove/change the algorithm of dithering from newer GPU's, if this is something you are willing to explore. It's made by a r/monitors mod for clamping higher color gamut monitors, which are known to cause some eyestrain to some people.

      As for the last sentence, both PWM and temporal dithering have their place in the current world. It's their implementation by manifacturers which is flawed, due to cutting costs.

        qb74 I've seen so many people claim temporal dithering is the cause of their issues but no verification in form of video to show it.

        Not sure where I have the video saved but here's something to think about

        However while my tests aren't entirely conclusive I have a certain RX 580 card that has dithering on by default which is even visible in the BIOS screen before any operating system driver would have relevance.

          qb74

          The nvidia srgb clamp thing? I wanted to try that. - this? https://www.reddit.com/r/Monitors/comments/pakpy9/srgb_clamp_for_nvidia_gpus/ - it is.

          Clamped mode seems to force srgb, I have been thinking it is something to do with this as certain applications seem to overwrite what windows is doing, you can see the colors change on screen when going into an 3d app - desktop / none 3d application on the 2060 is more usable than 3d application. I will need to read all the docs on this.

          I can confirm though the 3060ti is much worse for me than the 2060 on all monitors, the output is also more blurry, noticably more blurry on the screen with exactly the same settings, resolution, driver version etc.

          Edit - clamped srgb mode 'feels' different but as I already have a headache / migraine now I cant tell if its better. This is odd as my monitor has a SRGB mode, all of them do and I've got windows set to SRGB but maybe applications overwrite this setting? I have also set ditering to disabled

          Does anyone know if getting a monitor calibration tool, one of the external USB ones will cause a profile to persist everwhere?

            @thorpee haha thanks mate, glad someone got the humor. I posted the same thing on the NVIDIA forums. and someone took it really serious and snapped at me pretty hard. I'm also glad to see that there are at least a good number of people in the same boat as me experiencing this issue. The guy that snapped on me on the NVIDIA forums gave me some good intel, though. I wonder if it would be of any help.

            Here's the link to my post:

            Massive eye strain with a new RTX 3070TI

            I was reading through this post here:

            eye-strain-with-new-gpu

            and then also reading through the stuff I got on my NVIDIA post and mixing those with my own experiences so far and one interesting thing drew my attention. I know you might have already tried this out, but check this line from the link he sent me

            I doubt this would work, and I think @JTL is right, because this is being applied to the image by the card, and before it even hits the monitor, but I still wanna be sure. Have you guys tried the cards with 1440p and 4k monitor? Because for me personally, the sensation seems to be at its absolute worst when playing low res content. Like, when I play a video at 360p on YouTube or when I first open up a game and the resolution is low, I feel like someone is putting a spoon into my eye sockets and trying to pop my eyes out like a skinned boiled egg :l

            qb74

            I am curious myself to see what the hell this tech is doing that is just frying my eyes so bad. But unlike PWM, I can't seem to capture anything visible with my smartphone. But I found this on YouTube

            Temporal Dithering

            and Jesus Christ does it look like PWM x 10000

            no wonder my eyes are going bonkers.

            I do have to say that, my eyes are so sensitive to PWM that even on my tube backlight LCD monitor where the PWM lines aren't even visible when filming the screen. I get eye ache after lots of usage hours, specially my Samsung monitor. Samsung is like the biggest PWM abuser. I have not been behind a single Samsung screen that didn't hurt my eyes, from smartphones to monitors to TVs. I've checked my eyes multiple times no issues and after struggling for almost a year with my Samsung TV before I managed to sell it I can tell this kinda pain pretty quick. It's definitely not me overthinking it.

            I also tried that tool that you sent and chose to disable dithering, but I don't think it made any difference. I even used another app where you could do the same with some command lines in cmd. I think it was on the post that @HAL9000 sent. I'm not exactly sure. But that made no difference either. I am just so devastated and hopeless.

            I also tried updating to Windows 11 as it was mention by someone on that post that it fixed the issue for them. My screen is feeling abit better, but the issue has definitely not gone. My eyes are almost exploding. I even keep reading in multiple placing that dithering shouldn't even be enabled by default in windows, and it's only enabled on Mac, but that definitely seems to not be true.

                BloodyHell619 Here's the link to my post:

                It doesn't open for me (re-directs me to a list of threads), do I have to login?

                Have you considered trying MXLinux, just to see what Linux does for your strain?

                Also checkout my thread on binocular vision. It is possible the "flicker" caused by temporal dithering is trigger a pre-existing binocular vision dysfunction, that you have been able to compensate for your entire life, with eye suppression. E.g. you've had no issues until this display came along and messed up your ability to do suppression. Several folks on this forum have gotten improvements exploring this avenue: eye patching, vision therapy, prism glasses. It all starts with a visit from a good optometrist (not ophthalmologist).

                Also, you can see temporal dithering on an e-ink display here -- notice the dancing dots.

                    ryans

                    Sorry, just updated the link.

                    The BVD topic was very interesting, but I think rather than being the pure cause of this pain, it explains why we would get fatigued much faster if one of our eyes is more stressed rather than weak. See, (and correct me if I am wrong) but isn't it reasonably possible that throughout a day there is a chance that pretty much at any given moment one of our eyes might be stressed more than the other and the brain would do eye suppression to prevent it from further fatigue or even damage? So if it's true that PWM keeps waking the fatigued eye, that would mean that even if one of your eyes is not weak and is only fatigued, PWM will keep waking it and fatiguing it to the point of pain and damage. So technically you do not need to have BVD to get strained by PWM.

                    I can give my own case as an example, I use a dual monitor setup

                    -an "LG FLATRON W2261VP" (This monitor only strains my eyes if I sit behind it 24/7 for days and days)

                    -a "Samsung Syncmaster SN1943" (Even though it's a tube monitor, it certainly has horrible PWM, just as any other Samsung screen, and it hurts my eyes even after a few days of 24/7 use)(Lol do not buy any thing branded by Samsung if you are sensetive to PWM. Even in its most high-end smartphone like the latest versions of Galaxy Note and S Ultra it has horrible PWM and they still have no DC Dimming support)

                    Now, in the past the Samsung was on the left and the LG was on the right and I always developed pain in my left eye. Recently though I have moved it over to the right and even though my left eye is still in pain cause I just can't ever give it time to heal. My right eye is also developing the same pain. It's actually also not just the monitor that will cause one of your eyes to get more fatigued. I play guitar and I know that my left hand gets much more strained and since the muscles that control the eyes are somehow connected it's reasonable that my left eye is always in more stress than the right.

                    The Bottom line I think is that, these technologies should be done with. I don't think PWM should have passed on from tube screens to LED screens. Tube lamps take a while to fade out. LEDs fade out instantly. PWM is not suited for LED screen imo, specially, at the horribly bad frequencies they are being implemented into budget screens. Don't even get me started with dithering. To strain your eyes this bad just for a few colors?? Anyone even have a sample image of how much difference this damn tech makes?

                    As for the 3070ti, I literally gave up and took it out. My eyes were straining so bad I was starting to see a white fade on my vision. I'm so pissed that I don't even have a single friend with a proper monitor to be able to make sure that my monitor is not the cause. But anyways, I switched back to my Radeon HD5850 and am gonna work with it a few days to see how the strain feels. That would definitely give me some clue. I am at that point where I can't even tell the difference from pain. I feel like I am seeing the exact issues with my old card now. Maybe the screen is fucked up after all. Or maybe the 3070ti managed to finally fuck up my vision for good; I can't tell now lol.

                    If this is the path graphic card companies are going to take from now on, this literally means I have to give up playing video games for good. :/

                        BloodyHell619

                        Have you tried the 3070 setting Windwos (I assume windows) icc profiles?

                        I've found that with a 2060 and yesterday with a 3060ti setting windows to SRGB and applying the 'default' profiles helps.

                        I'm now playing with the SRGB clamp using the link above as well.

                        I used my 3060ti yesterday for approx 1.5 hours on a VA screen that doesnt work for me even on my 'good' hardware - yet with the icc / SRGB settings in Windows and the Nvidia tool I feel less 'disabled' today than I have in the past. (as in previously when I started this testing I would have a very very bad migraine headache for 1-3 days afterwards) is the first time in a month i've uised the 3060ti as it gives me bad symptoms. The 2060 is also not as bad with these settings.

                        Neither are immediately usable as the 1660s though

                            HAL9000

                            Yes, I am pretty sure that my settings are set to sRGB and default, but as for the ICC profiles, where can I get these ICC profiles from? They are monitor specific, right? If so, do you think there would even be a profile for a monitor as old as mine?

                            I hope this is not true, but I think your relief is because you haven't been behind it for a long time. For me, it took about like 4 days being behind the pc until the symptoms started heavily appearing.

                            I'm having almost the same feelings as I had with the 3070ti with my old card, right now. I am just hoping I did not mess any settings up or fuck up my eyes and that they are just strained or the monitor has become faulty.

                            I hope you still feel relief after a few days of use, that would be some real hope. Oh, and what monitor are you using with the 3060ti?

                                BloodyHell619 but isn't it reasonably possible that throughout a day there is a chance that pretty much at any given moment one of our eyes might be stressed more than the other and the brain would do eye suppression to prevent it from further fatigue or even damage?

                                I don't think someone with good binocular vision ever does eye suppression. Only if you have problems. What these flickering displays/lights do is disrupt the suppression you previously used.

                                    BloodyHell619

                                    With the 2060 and 3060 cards I get symptoms within minutes of use, same for various intel graphics laptops and symptoms get worse even after i stop usage and persist for days. Mobile phones also affect me and I cant use apple laptops (intel)

                                    I also stopped testing the 3060 as it got too much for me to essentially suffer every day and I started to use a 2060 and found it moustly the same symptoms wise, but then I changed the color management, this has helped it hasnt solved the issue.

                                    (Not with 1660s though this was always fine to use on same driver version and I never had to set any color management settings)

                                    I have Benq gw2480, LG29 ultrawide wl2950s Both fine to use with my 1660s. Neither immediately fine to use with 2060/3060

                                    So with the color profiles Ive got them for my monitors from the manufacture site, if your screen is very old this may not be possible but I've also tried the default icc srgb profile and the default wcs profile

                                    My theory is that applications are overwriting what windows is doing as on the 1660 there were some applications (games) that I could not use as they gave me the same symptoms but others were fine. But at the same time the graphics hardware is also. I can see when clamping SRGB with the Nvidia tool thing the colors change and I've also see when not using it launching apps (games) the colors seem to change on launch. - example being since setting the color profiles the 2060 is much more usable for me at 'desktop' whereas before it wasnt. Thinking that forcing the settings in windows is overwriting / reducing the cards effect on colors etc.

                                    This may be using a 'feature' on the RTX cards that the GTX card doesnt support / use etc as I only had issues on my 1660 with certain modern games - hell let loose on the 1660 causing me same symptoms that 'anything' on the 3060 does for example.

                                    I cant prove this though 🙁

                                      ryans Have you considered trying MXLinux, just to see what Linux does for your strain?

                                      From my (limited) understanding, if the card output is so severely compromised that even the BIOS screen has visual issues, it raises much more difficult questions than just merely trying other drivers or operating systems.

                                      Also checkout my thread on binocular vision. It is possible the "flicker" caused by temporal dithering is trigger a pre-existing binocular vision dysfunction

                                      In my opinion if the problem is from the card itself (which it probably is) it makes sense to first isolate that and mitigate the issue on a technical level (such as by obtaining a GPU known to not have dithering issues) than worry about possible compensation for visual issues afterwards.

                                          ryans

                                          Oh, I see. I thought it was something that happened all the time. I still doubt I have BVD. Both my eyes see perfectly alone, and I think I did get a sorta BVD test everytime I went to have them checked.

                                          JTL

                                          Totally agree with both your statements.

                                          You cannot believe the amount of time and effort I put into changing setting of my TU7000 Samsung TV back when I had it and was suffering from its PWM. Every time I felt I had found a good color, brightness setting that would take the pain away. I even managed to tune it to a point where I could no longer capture the black lines that were running down the screen on camera. But still every time after a few hours of use the pain was back.

                                          I just sent tickets both to ASUS and NVIDIA asking for a way to disable Dithering. I hope I get something from them. Have any of you done so? If so what response did you get?

                                                BloodyHell619

                                                Nividia tell me my 3060 is not dithering and is exactly the same output as my 1660 based on the log dumps I sent them. Yet the output is noticably blurry and all the other assoicated symptoms even with my newest color management settings.

                                                    JTL

                                                    They requested kernel memory dumps, the link they sent me no longer works but it should be these:

                                                    https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5149/kw/logs

                                                    https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4755/\~/manually-forcing-a-system-crash-using-a-keyboard

                                                    which may actually be

                                                    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/kernel-memory-dump

                                                    but the link they sent me with their instructions no longer exists. These memory dumps were approx 900mb for each card and had to be shared with nvidia.

                                                        HAL9000

                                                        I think I am about to receive the exact same carp they gave you too

                                                        This should be exactly what they told you, right?

                                                        I could swear they are lying about something.

                                                        My eyes hurt so bad, I don't even wanna put the card back in again to take the dump lol. I think I am going to end up damaging my PCI slots, riser and my power cable pins putting the card in and out so many times lol

                                                          dev