I just wonder if some sort of CNS toxicity could have happened, but there is no way to prove or disprove that theory.

It's certainly possible. I was exposed to hydrocarbons from a faulty heating system for a few days, and from that limited exposure years ago am now sensitized to all sorts of hydrocarbons and have an immediate, painful reaction to them, and will for life. From my reading, once a sensitive individual is exposed to a substance and sensitized to it (develops an increased reaction/other effects) it is nearly impossible to "de-sensitize" that person. They just need to live with it.

I'm not saying this has definitely happened to you, and given the extremely small % of people susceptible to this it is extremely likely it has not happened, but there is a non zero chance.

Well I just came home from my tonsillectomy (painful), the nasal septum surgery will take place in 20 days. I'll give you an update shortly after the that.

4 days later

Jerry

Similar. This all sounds like self-diagnosed WebMD paranoia.

A. Look at one LED monitor - get immediate headaches/migraines/eye strain lasting for a little while to days
vs
B. Look at another LED monitor - nothing

There's just something wrong with certain LED panels (response/image retention/etc) that affects certain people. I picked a monitor from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/flicker_free_database.htm and received immediate relief. You may have to select one from that list with the best specs, but you should find relief as as well. This is coming from someone who can't even take a few minutes of certain LED panels before having a 3-4 day headache.

Now if you already have health complications and migraines before, a different monitor will likely not cure that.

      train44 There's just something wrong with certain LED panels (response/image retention/etc) that affects certain people. I picked a monitor from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/flicker_free_database.htm

      Thats not a definite. I am using a monitor right now that is certified flicker free on that page and am having troubles with it. It's looking to be much more video hardware/driver dependent than monitor dependent.

          Agreed. I purchased a flicker free, low blue light and high refresh screen and had problems when connecting it to a known good PC/video card.

          5 days later

          train44 I think my main problem is caused by "moving objects" on screen. With the new BenQ GW2760HS monitor (supposed to be PWM and FRC free) connected to nvidia card in a Dell xps8910 desktop, I can look at a static screen without any problems. But if there are things moving on the screen and it does not have to move very fast, eg, scrolling up and down at a normal speed, switch screens with alt-tab as we usually do, when loading a webpage, even typing words like what I am doing right now, I will start to get headaches immediately. I have no problems watching things moving in real life although I do get motion sickness on bus if I am tired. I feel like the screen induced symptom gets worse if I don't have a good night of sleep. By the way, my testing results on BenQ monitor and nvidia card are mixed. I will report that when I can make better sense of what is happening.

          One more piece of information: I wear a blublocker clip-on whenever I am in front a screen.

              Jerry Did you turn off BenQ's AMA option? Im not saying I'd get headaches but it definitely increases eye strain with my monitor.
              And about NVIDIA cards: Here we once thought that NVIDIA=good, but it turned out that's not always true.

                  KM I was just going to try to turn it off, but it is already set to off by default. My desktop has an integrated intel card, I am not sure if that can make a difference in any way. I ordered an HP desktop with AMD processor and nvidia card just to completely get rid of intel. The HP desktop will arrive by the end of this month.

                    Jerry Interesting you mentioning the moving thing. I could never play FPS such as UT or Quake because I would get nausea from all the movement. Playing games such as Age of Empires 2 was OK, though. It involved a lot less moving of the screen and it would happen in a lot more predictable ways.

                    I hate these new movies in 60fps, they make me dizzy like crazy.

                        Jerry That may point to refresh rate. Pixels being redrawn as objects move around the screen may be a trigger if they are not refreshed quickly.

                            __528491__ I could stay up all night to play starcraft when I was a college student. There were no problems at all. Now I cannot even touch that game. I could not play counter strike though, the 3D thing give me problems.

                              ensete make sense. Maybe I should try a high refresh rate monitor. Does the graphics card have anything to do with refresh rate, or a monitor is enough to have it under control? Thanks.

                                  Jerry Both. The monitor needs to support the refresh rate and the video card needs to be able to push the pixels that fast

                                      ensete I did a bit research thru the internet. It seems that an important performance measure for a graphics card is frames per second (FPS). There is a lot discussion about it for playing video games. It seems to take a very good graphics card to get over 60 FPS. Most of the average video cards can only give less or much less than 30 FPS. And it is related to the screen resolution, the higher the resolution, the less FPS. My understanding is that the refresh rate of a monitor is capped by the FPS of the graphics card. If the card can only do 30 FPS, then the monitor with 60 hz refresh rate does not give you 60hz. It is actually only 30 hz. There are software to measure FPS in a game. Not sure if there is any way to find out the FPS when not playing a game?

                                        I played a bit more with MSI afterburner this weekend. After installing a counter-strike game, the MSI afterburner starts to work once I launch the game. It shows that my nvidia graphics card can render 75 frames per second (FPS) which matches the refresh rate of my BenQ monitor (75hz) under 1024 X 768 resolution. If I minimize the game window and let it run in the background, FPS drops down to 45-50. If I exit the game, then MSI burner can not pick up the performance of graphic card and shows 0 FPS. It seems that the graphics card does not render frames at a constant rate despite the fact that the refresh rate of a monitor is fixed at a constant. Launching the game somehow makes the graphics card work more effectively. I tried to actually play the game for a few minutes, did not feel uncomfortable.

                                        I also tried the same thing on the integrated intel card (after disabling the nvidia card), almost instant headaches. MSI burner cannot pick up any FPS in the game. Intel graphics card is definitely one of the headache causes if it is not the only cause.

                                          Jerry FPS will vary by how much work the video card has to do. Play a 3d game and look up at the sky, with no motion on the screen, and you can top 150 FPS. Start running around with other characters and weapons firing and death animations and you will drop below 30.

                                          Have you checked that you have the manufacturer ICC profile installed under Windows color management?

                                              ensete what confuses me is that the FPS drops after I minimize the game window. I thought the FPS should increase because of the 3D game is more demanding than probably anything else in terms of graphics.

                                              I checked the ICC profile. Not sure if it is install correctly. P
                                              image icc-png
                                              icture attached here.

                                                  Jerry That is a picture of all the profiles installed on the system. Click the "Devices" tab next to it, select your monitor from the list of devices, and see what ICC profile is listed as default. If it is not one from the manufacturer, download it from the manufacturer and add it as default

                                                  what confuses me is that the FPS drops after I minimize the game window

                                                  With the game maximized, the video card is only working on the game, not windows. When it is minimized the game is likely still consuming some video card resources, AND it needs to draw Windows too. Just a hypothesis.

                                                      ensete I just checked the default ICC profile for the monitor, it is from BenQ. Not sure if that is making a difference for me. I can test it later by switching it to Dell.

                                                      Regarding the FPS, I just find out that older versions of chrome has a built in FPS counter. So I installed an old version chrome and turned on the FPS counter, most time it shows less than 10 FPS. Very often it is less than 5 (see attached picture). For watching online video, it is 24-30 FPS. What is more confusing is that these numbers are very different than what MSI afterburner gives me. MSI afterburner shows a stable number ranging from 45-50 while chrome FPS counter shows <10 at the same time.
                                                      image chromefps-png

                                                        I would suspect the Chrome Frame Rate counter is counting how many frames needs to get drawn. It's only drawing a new frame when something changes, hence low FPS when you are just looking at text and flat images

                                                        I can test it later by switching it to Dell.

                                                        Try switching it to the Windows default (I think it is sRG😎 and see if that matters

                                                        • JTL replied to this.
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