Best graphics card to prevent migraines, nausea, etc.. Intel Arc A770 or A750?

emmet

Hi, I have a very old graphics card and I previously tried AMD Radeon RX 6600 and currently trying an Nvidia RTX 3060 both of which eventually after a few days to a week made my migraines much worse, caused nausea and eye strain. I have a modern PC that I built but my old DirectX 11 card is likely going to die soon and prevents me from easily upgrading to Windows 11. I need a graphics card to power two AOC 34 inch monitors. What are some of the more current cards (hopefully new but will consider used) that you have had the most success with either out of the box or with minimal tweaking? Has anyone tried the new Intel Arc A770 or A750 GPUs?

Also, is this issue with new cards causing eyestrain/migraines one that I can get use to with time?

Finally, I don't even game but want a card that will last for years to come. I would also like to possibly go back to some gaming but this is not a priority were as my health is.

Thanks!

degen

emmet I have Intel Arc A770 LE for a couple of weeks now. I don’t experience symptoms with it (at least not those beyond OS-level symptoms). There is banding present on the output of this card in my configuration. I am symptomatic with AMD and new Nvidia cards.

The Intel Arc A770 LE feels just like integrated Intel graphics, which I also don’t have symptoms with.

If I enable dithering with the new Windows 11 Advanced Color settings (see my posts below), the banding disappears and I have pain.

I would be cautious of third party Arc cards, they could introduce temporal dithering on the VBIOS. My experience is, for now, valid only for the Intel Arc A770 LE card.

This is big for me. I am coming from an old Nvidia Quadro K5000 card.

I can also game on it on Windows 10 when I force Fullscreen Exclusive (FSE) mode by disabling Fullscreen Optimizations and verifying using PresentMon (game.exe frames should be logged as “Hardware: Legacy Flip” if your game is running in FSE). Fullscreen games that only offer a borderless window can probably be forced Fullscreen Exclusive using Special K. My OS-level strain (because it is experienced on all cards, good and bad) is greatly mitigated in FSE. PresentMon is very useful as you can actually check the presentation mode of a running application and compare symptoms.

EDIT: for clarity

JTL

degen If I enable dithering with the new Windows 11 Advanced Color settings, the banding disappears and I have pain.

Got a screenshot of said "advanced color settings"?

emmet

degen This is awesome news. I am currently using my laptop for work and it also has integrated Intel graphics so this gives me hope and I will try the Intel A770 and let you know how it goes. I don't generally like getting the first gen of any product but if it will help Intel make more of these I am all in.

To my knowledge I don't have issues with the version of Windows I am using but it looks like it's something I need to look into. I have Chronic Migraines and perhaps the OS is part of the issue there. I might even go back to Windows 7 or 8 for a bit to see what happens.

Thanks!

jordan

degen is that GPU still good for you? What Windows version are you running today?

jordan

degen what exact win build are you running with the a770 arc? Is it completely safe even non gaming ? I have this GPU just don't know which windows to load for testing on this GPU

degen

JTL Yes, I will go get it now. But check this out, which is where I found it. Advancing the State of Color Management in Windows.

I had to enable it, only available in Windows 11 22H2 and certain GPU using the registry key in the article:

To enable ACM, a global registry key can be used, which will enable ACM support for all SDR monitors all the time:

Locate within the registry the global GraphicsDrivers regkey (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\GraphicsDrivers)

Right click “Add” -> DWORD

Name: EnableAcmSupportDeveloperPreview

value: 1

If the monitor is already plugged in, you will need to disconnect and re-connect it. In case of internal panel, restart the laptop.

Go to Settings > Display > Advanced Display, select correct display and turn on Automatically manage color for apps

It is able possible to enable it for HDR monitors by tricking Windows into thinking your monitor is SDR. I will find the application I did that with as well.

EDIT: That app is Custom Resolution Utility (CRU)

degen

JTL Enabling Advanced Color causes me eyestrain so I leave it disabled. But I have it enabled for this screenshot:

The Advanced Color option is "Automatically manage color for apps", which only becomes available with the above registry tweak and only on SDR displays or HDR displays with HDR disabled using Custom Resolution Utility (@ryans)

Note also how it now says 8-bit with dithering with the Advanced Color option enabled. It just says 8-bit normally.

@ryans here is the instructions for the Custom Resolution Utility to get Advanced Color on HDR display:

Taken from Still can’t see “Automatically manage color for apps” in the setting #5

Thanks to the Github user aufkrawall who provided the solution:

Edit your monitor's EDID with CRU by un-ticking colorspaces checkboxes in CTA-861 extension block -> Colorimetry:
https://www.monitortests.com/forum/Thread-Custom-Resolution-Utility-CRU

Then HDR should become unavailable, which makes the clamp toggle appear.

EDIT: for clarity

ryans

degen Interesting post, thanks for sharing! Another blog post about DWM / DirectX is linked:

Advanced Color capabilities were first introduced for HDR displays with Windows 10, version 1709 (Fall Creators Update), and for specially provisioned SDR displays with the Windows 11, version 22H2 (10.0; Build 22621) release.

@ensete you might find it interesting.

ryans

degen Custom Resolution Utility

Is this a Windows app or something you downloaded (if so, a link could be helpful 🙂 )

JTL

degen Ahh, the fact internal Windows utilities are seemingly exposing the existence of dithering in the output pipeline could be considered a double-edged sword to some.

karut

degen

To clarify: which setting is the default one? "Automatically optimize colors" on?

Did you customize Win 11 in any way with regards to eye strain?

I didn't change any settings when using the A750, perhaps dithering was turned on?

degen

emmet It is an interesting experiment to try old Windows, just to see if modern Windows is a hidden cause for you. As a solution it is not very practical now for a number of reasons, for example now Chromium dropped support for 7/8. Windows 10 version 1507 is the baseline now to have Chromium browser updates, and along with 1511, is the final “safe” version of Windows (although some find Windows 7 with DWM disabled fills that role). Still many modern applications with not run, and forget about it with new hardware. I am trying to move on myself and use modern Windows 10/11, and that is going OK for me. I guess I always bring it up because I don’t want OS-related strain as a subject of discussion to be forgotten.

Good luck with the Arc card. I am looking forward to your report.

karut My Intel Arc A770 LE gave me eyestrain on Linux, but not on Windows. Sorry to hear it did not work out for you.

jordan

emmet have you tested it?

karut

Congrats, Degen!

I tested an A750 with Windows 11/Linux and I am pretty sure both scenarios gave me eye strain. Perhaps the A770 is different or dithering is not the cause.

degen

karut The option to “Automatically manage colors for apps” can only be made visible with a registry key, and its default is Off.

According to Microsoft:

ACM brings Advanced Color to select qualifying and specially provisioned SDR displays, starting with Surface Studio 2+ and Surface Pro 9.

Those are the only devices (for the moment) I imagine Microsoft could default this to On for.

karut

degen

Thanks! Is there anything else you changed about your setup? Any to mitigate OS-level when you are not gaming?

degen

karut I haven't found any changes to mitigate OS-level eyestrain when not gaming, although some people have reported success with audit mode. I am tolerating modern Windows 10/11 better these days though, perhaps because of the treatment I've received and talked about here.

reaganry

I sent my Arc 750 back because it seemed like Intel wasnt going to support it well going forward. i.e. no VR, certain functions only supported in HDMI, but HDMI cables register as DP.. only linux option was Ubuntu, no DirectX 9… It did seem promising though visually

jordan

I bought an arc a770 LE yesterday but probably won't test it for awhile.. gonna test some other hardware/OS first. I need a safe PC and I don't have that yet. Will update whenever I test the arc!

karut

jordan How is the A770?

jordan

Going to first be testing the z490 dark 10900kf/rtx 5000 on win7. Hoping that'll be super safe as it's safe for someone else here!