Utterly lost for words... So my friend to whom I had sold my Gigabyte GTX 970 Gaming G1 bought a new graphics card a few days ago, and so I thought I'd get my card back from him as I didn't get strained by it, and it was still a good card. I have used this card for over 10 years. I have never had burning eye sensations, nauseous feelings or this horrid level of eye strain from it. I slam it in, and it is straining me so bad I have been close to vomiting twice. What on gods earth is freaking going on here?! :"( I am truly lost for words. Right now I have a Zotac GT 1030. This card is years newer than the GTX 970, and it doesn't give me the slightest eye strain. How is this freakin possible?! The thing that is crazy is I can see banding everywhere. I don't even freakin know what nvidia is making these cards dither for.

BloodyHell619 I have some ideas, but unfortunately seeing how I don't have a "bad" NVIDIA cared nor a test system in my lab at the moment, that is a problem for research. What I think could be the case is internal VBIOS settings and potentially per unit variance could impact the digital output quality of the GPU. Meaning not all cards of a certain series are blanket "bad". In addition certain differences between driver versions, motherboard firmware initializing the card and OS could influence things. But without the resources to test, it's just informed speculation

BloodyHell619 As I mentioned earlier it may depend on what has already been installed up to this point. https://ledstrain.org/d/1524-eye-strain-with-new-gpu/132 it makes sense to check on a clean system and also possibly experiment with the motherboard bios and drivers. Windows To Go I think it will be good chose https://ledstrain.org/d/2236-windows-to-go-is-a-good-way-to-test-builds I agree that it is a crime for nvidia to make and support a product this way. For example they definitely lost one customer in the form of me.

BloodyHell619 Make sure all those aspects are unchanged from the time this gpu didn't strain you : windows version (if possible with exactly the same drivers for everything not just gpu, and same feature and quality updates). I had cases where a windows version would look bad on a gpu-mobo and better on another gpu-mobo. exact same mobo (i mean the exact same not only the same model). Also same other components (memory and so on…) exact same screen same gpu driver same display port or hdmi cable depending on what you use same bios and firmware versions Try to clear the cmos to reset the bios to its original state and see if it makes a difference.

My question exactly: iare you using exactly the same setup as you used to use with it? At least HW wise? Is at least the same mobo?

machala T Liberator005 The exact same hardware as before! Exact same mobo, CPU, power, monitors, cables, … My bios and windows are definitely updated from then and so are my drivers it would be quite some hell to figure out what driver and Windows version I was using, and it just doesn't make sense to me that the 1030 isn't straining me while the 970 is. What's even more horrid is that I tried the dual GPU method where I plug my monitors into my 1030 and let my 970 do the workload and what happens is that even when I set my 1030 as the "high performance" card so that in the Windows environment the 970 doesn't do anything my eyes were still straining!! Like simply having that card in the system was making it dither! I tried adding these two lines to the registry DP_DisableDither TMDS_DisableDither and setting their value to 1 which from this article I read should disable dithering: https://docs.teradici.com/knowledge/how-do-i-turn-temporal-dithering-amd-graphics-card What was interesting was that after I added these and opened up "Calibration Tool", Enabling/Disabling dithering from there made no difference to the colour gradient. So these codes are definitely disabling some kind of dithering, but the card was still straining me like hell. The strain was maddening, I think it even makes my blood pressure go up. This morning I woke up with such eye strain, dizzy feeling and high blood pressure that I almost wanted to call my friend and have him come pick me up and take me to the hospital. My head feels like It's exploding right now. I pulled the card out and am gonna let my eyes rest a little and maybe do some more testing. I might try installing an older diver. I'm really starting to get the impression that something has gone wrong with me. I mean first my Galaxy Note 5 which I was using for 8 years and I could no longer use without massive strain after board replacement and now my 970. Could it be that once you use a device that has horrible dithering like the disgusting 3000 series graphic card line-up your eyes start seeing dithering, and they could no longer unsee it? I know I used to get eye strain from my Galaxy Note 5 and even the 970 back then, but it was only after days and days and days of 24 hour use. And it was never this kind of burning sensation or nauseousness. Just simple eye fatigue. I'm going to take my question onto Microsoft forums and Nvidia. This is really crazy, we would really have to start living in the jungle if this is the path that pretty much every tech company is starting to take. For now, I am going to spend a few days behind my system with the 1030 and this latest driver. If the strain goes on, I will try an older driver. If it is really a driver matter, it would be even more horrid. That means even the stuff that work for us will become outdated. The new Last of Us remake which actually crashes like crazy with the latest Nvidia driver (v531.41) gives a warning that my driver is outdated if I have anything lower installed.

I have an alternative explanation for everyone to consider. I keep a lot of my old hardware for spares, backups and the like. Its fairly common for me to return to an older device and find it causes me symptoms when previously it was fine. I do not believe the hardware has changed, but I know I have. My eyes and brain are getting older, whatever defect causes me these symptoms has either worsened, or my brain is less able to adapt to it. When I was a teenager I could recover from a bad migraine in hours, now in my thirties it takes days. Its a normal part of aging, the older you are, the longer it takes you to learn and for your brain to adapt and recover. Perhaps when you were younger, your brain could adapt to your GPU before you experienced symptoms. I know this opinion will be unpopular with many here, but it underpins how I treat my own problems. Knowing the problem is within me, I don't look for the problems with devices and software to fix. I instead consider, what can I do to help myself adapt to this device. Exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells, so when I need to try to adapt to a new phone, I sit on an exercise bike whilst using it. previously it used to take me 6months of suffering to be able to use new phones without headaches and migraines. Now, with my exercise bike trick it takes me just a few weeks and much less pain. I found what I eat can have a big impact on my symptoms and health in general. Through trial and error I found that my body really doesn't like red meat, diary and other more specific things. I cut those things out of my diet many years ago and found that my screen intolerances stopped worsening. Infact, for the last three years my screen intolerance has actually been improving. I am hopeful that in another few years I will no longer have any issues with screens at all. So my advice for you, and everyone else. Focus your attention on yourselves, not the tech, and see how it works out. See specialists in eye health, see what you can do to improve your brain health, look at your diet.

BloodyHell619 It's also worth noting that it's hard to recognize a successful configuration for the eyes after a heavy, traumatic mode of work with. The eyes are already a little traumatized and disturbed and it seems that everything is bad, it takes time to recover, and you should not rush to conclusions. As an example, in order to assess the difference between the spirits are advised to smell the coffee.

Seagull To be honest with you, I am coming closer and closer to agreeing with you too. For me, after witnessing the strain from the 970 only 2 other theories remain: 1- The newer Nvidia drivers are making the cards dither. I will be able to tell this in a few days, if the 1030 strains me too with this new driver. 2- As I said in the previous post, maybe once you experience a very low PWM or really bad dithering or maybe by simply becoming too aware of their presence your brain can no longer unsee them, and it starts to focus on them no matter what, causing you unbearable strain. If this is true, it is pretty scary and could mean it might be irreversible. If these two theories of mine get thrown out of the window, honestly, only your explanation could be true. I have to admit, since the pandemic, I barely go out of the house ever. So it could not only be the fact that we have come to age and our brains are struggling to adapt, but it could be that too much focus on the screen and being in a small room for so long with the same life day after day has intensified my focus on these screens. Since as long as I remember, I got pretty bad eye-aches and headaches from bad screens. If my friends came over to play Fifa after 2 or 3 days of playing, I would get such massive eye strain and headaches that I would have to go in the room and tie my head up and sleep for a few hours to be able to play again. But that eye-ache and headache never came with burning and dull eyes, nauseous feelings, such horrible depression. So there is definitely something wrong with these devices, and we definitely aren't just crazy. I, too, have been trying to adapt myself with my Note 5 specially by trying to differ my focus from locking on the screen, I also try to go out of the house into our front yard and have my gaze on farther distances, do more exercises and have been trying to get out of my room, head and the screens in front of me more often in hopes of being able to adapt again. There's literally not a single new device that not making use of these techs. Our options are getting thinner and thinner. I'm gonna have my mom also try and contact a doctor in our capital city and see if maybe he can come up with any better explanations. The doctors here have literally never even heard about such things. It's like alien language to them. I'm wondering if it could have anything to do with having high blood pressure.

CepheiHR8938 I also want to add that I do not believe in the strong effect of dithering on eye strain, all my experiments prove otherwise. That it has almost no effect. There is some flickering going on here. And the flicker is not the backlight, but the rendering.

BloodyHell619 You need to be careful with thinking that you can't use anymore hardwares that you used to be able to use. Be aware that the software component plays a huge role, just a simple os update or whatever update on your galaxy note 5 may have made it unusable. I had 2 cases where updates made my phones unusable. I think you would be perfectly fine if you could use your hardware/software exactly as they were. But as you can see, software constantly updates and it's super hard to get the exact state you had. I have my laptop right now, and according to the nvidia driver I use, I get differently bad symptoms. 3 drivers, 3 symptoms or different sensations. From acceptable to untolerable according to the driver. There is another thread where someone couldn't use his setup anymore. It turned out it was just a Google Chrome update. Even websites have their own way of image processing. Look at youtube for example and see how more saturated it is. I remember youtube changed for me like some months ago. See the difference between an image looked on bing or on google. Open a white page (for ex google home page) in microsoft edge, google chrome, and firefox, place them side by side and observe by yourself the difference in white tone, the reds and so on.

Got back GTX 970 I used for 10y with no sever strain! Now.. Horrendous strain!

BloodyHell619

AGI but physical pain behind the eyes, inflammation and "scratching sand in the eyes-feeling

Oh boy! Yes, that's the exact sorta pain I'm having right now. It's so disgusting.

AgentX20 And rest assured, we know just how hugely frustrating this stuff is.

Thanks so much, mate.

God, I don't know what that wrecked card did to my system, absolutely nothing works. Changing the bios didn't work either.

First I did a BIOS update to the latest version, it didn't help. Then I did a downgrade to a pretty old version, still didn't help. I took out my GT 1030 and put in an ancient Radeon HD5850 which I also never had strain with and still there was massive strain. I don't even think dithering had been invented when this card came out! There is no setting for dithering at all in "ColorControl" app. I am absolutely clueless, devastated and in pain. I'm just gonna give myself a few more days and hope the pain is just my imagination, because I don't think there is anything else left for me to try.

AgentX20

BloodyHell619 I don't think there is anything else left for me to try.

Without going back through all of this thread, it could still be your Windows version.

Microsoft is very aggressive at slipstreaming updates, so you need to apply some tricks to stop the updates.

If you just put 1511 on, with an old/appropriate video driver and NO updates, does it cause eye-strain?

Sunspark

You'll have to try a different motherboard or a different monitor.. since you used two different cards.

You may also benefit from trying an entirely different OS.. why don't you flash a Linux distro onto a USB drive and boot from it and see how it is? Try MX Linux's XFCE spin.

BloodyHell619

AgentX20 Without going back through all of this thread, it could still be your Windows version.

Microsoft is very aggressive at slipstreaming updates, so you need to apply some tricks to stop the updates.

If you just put 1511 on, with an old/appropriate video driver and NO updates, does it cause eye-strain?

I fully formatted my SSD, even deleted the partition and created a new partition and installed a fresh 1511 build of windows and still there was as much eye strain.

Sunspark why don't you flash a Linux distro onto a USB drive and boot from it and see how it is? Try MX Linux's XFCE spin.

I tried this and there was still eye strain even in that Linux build.

I think I am even having strain in the bios screen.

Today I did a bunch of stuff and no use:

I went into my registry and tried manually erasing anything I saw of my GTX 970 and RTX 3070ti. Still eye strain.
Used iObit Uninstaller to monitor the Nvidia driver installation and then deleted it from there. Still strain.
I also had a really really old pc, slammed my Redeon Card in it, and I was actually still getting strained.
I then put an even more ancient card, an NVIDIA 9800GT, into my own system and still eye strain.

I could only think of three possible reasons for my strain, at this point: something has either gone wrong with my eyes, I'm just seeing something I didn't use to see before, or something has gone wrong with my monitors. And I have been using the monitors for 15 years, so I doubt it could be that. I don't have any other monitors to do a test any ways.

Right now I could only think of 2 more things I might have to try, I might start taking blood pressure pills or anti depressants. It is just crazy to think that every device I have been using in the past is becoming unusable.

Still, my eyesight is perfect and my LCD phone is usable for me without the slightest pain. I really can't figure out what's going on.

Sadly the 9800 GT didn't work in my old system, and now I put it in this system, so what ever infected my 2 other cards has most probably infected this too anyways.

Sunspark

Could also try this Windows mod, they ripped out a bunch of stuff.. you can let us know how it is.

https://atlasos.net/

AgentX20

BloodyHell619 so what ever infected my 2 other cards has most probably infected this too anyways.

Man, this is a dreadful situation. Believe me I can empathise totally with what you're going through.

My only other suggestion I can think of is to look into the boot mode you're using with your PC/BIOS - did you by any chance reconfigure it to use UEFI?

If you did, say for the newer Windows versions, you could try putting it back to Legacy Boot or CSM mode. It'll stop your current Windows install from booting, and to reinstall you will need suitable boot media for Windows. From memory Rufus has an option as to which mode to use when writing the image.

Sunspark

Have you changed your electrical wiring setup lately? Instead of having a monitor in 1 wall outlet and the PC in another wall outlet, same for the speakers, etc. have everything together on a single power bar plugged into a single outlet. The thought behind this is to minimize ground hum.

BloodyHell619

Sunspark Have you changed your electrical wiring setup lately? Instead of having a monitor in 1 wall outlet and the PC in another wall outlet, same for the speakers, etc. have everything together on a single power bar plugged into a single outlet. The thought behind this is to minimize ground hum.

That's how my wiring is, but I still tried other combinations just to be sure, but the pain was still there.

AgentX20 Man, this is a dreadful situation. Believe me I can empathise totally with what you're going through.

Thanks mate, it is just good to know that someone else has felt this hell. Specially now that literally every single person in my life is calling me crazy. The fact that we actually have to suffer for having good eyesight and be called crazy is pretty sad.

AgentX20 My only other suggestion I can think of is to look into the boot mode you're using with your PC/BIOS - did you by any chance reconfigure it to use UEFI?

Sadly, I installed my windows a long time ago and my drive was in MBR format, so my windows is not UEFI. Actually during one of the 2 times that I installed build 1511 of windows I formatted the drive to GTP and installed UEFI windows, but the strain was still there with UEFI too. :"

Liberator005 This shit is maddening. The inconsistency makes it so painful to pinpoint what's wrong. I can't play my games and use my pc which was basically all my life lol. I'm writing this from my 2015 phone with old os that is the only device I can use right now. I still hope manufacturers will wake up, realize something is really wrong with modern displays and fix this shit once for all. Seriously everything was fine before and they came up with their overprocessing shit that noone cares about and that only worsens the image.

Mate, I totally feel you and I'm in the exact same situation. I have been trying to fool myself and not believe that my pc is done with, but I am getting closer and closer to realizing it's done with. I literally wanted to smash it to pieces last night and smash everything in my room and sit and cry. Aside from this pc the only thing I could also use is a horrifically old phone.

Liberator005 Heck some screens literally instill fear within me and make me have bad nightmares and sleep like shit.

Exactly the way I feel. Like last night, I woke up from a nightmare with a nauseous feeling, almost close to vomiting. I wish it was simply pain. It's like a pain you have when you're stung by a horrific insect. My eyes felt like they had been needled multiple times. And all the muscles in my face all the way down to the top of my chest felt like someone had cut them up with a poisoned Knife. It is such a disgusting feeling. I also have eczema, and I realized it was even horrifically amplifying my eczema. Like all my body was itching like crazy. My life is literally ruined.

Other things I tried today was taking my pc and connecting it to our TV and then reconnecting it to my monitors hoping the fucking card might stop dithering or whatever crap it's doing, but it made no difference. My GT 1030 and my Radeon HD5850 are now almost giving me a strain more horrid than the 3070ti itself.

I'm utterly hopeless, clueless and devastated.

glvn

AgentX20

So I replaced the blown up motherboard with something fairly similar (same z97 chipset, albeit a different manufacturer) to resurrect my old 4790K CPU.

Can you provide the full z97 MBoard name and bios version?

AgentX20

glvn Can you provide the full z97 MBoard name and bios version?

It's an ASUS Z97 DELUXE. Running BIOS version 2903.

Liberator005

This shit is maddening. The inconsistency makes it so painful to pinpoint what's wrong. I can't play my games and use my pc which was basically all my life lol. I'm writing this from my 2015 phone with old os that is the only device I can use right now. I still hope manufacturers will wake up, realize something is really wrong with modern displays and fix this shit once for all. Seriously everything was fine before and they came up with their overprocessing shit that noone cares about and that only worsens the image. There is the strain, but there is also the cognitive impacts. Heck some screens literally instill fear within me and make me have bad nightmares and sleep like shit. This isn't just a simple strain. It is messing up with our brains on some deep level.

Liberator005

BloodyHell619

The last laptop i could use extensively with 0 problem was one with intel hd530. I am gonna try to get myself one with this igpu. Maybe you could try. Still all other things need to be perfect (windows versions, screen...) but having a good gpu is a good start. Now it could be I was just lucky and another mobo with hd530 will create problems, who knows.

BloodyHell619

So in the continuation of my efforts to fix this shit, I found an old laptop of my dad and even though I found out that the screen of this ancient laptop uses PWM (another device that I can now no longer use), I connected it to both my monitors and there was no eye strain with either of my monitors. So the laptop surely doesn't use dithering.

And this means that there is nothing wrong with my monitors either.

So the root of the issue is surely the graphics cards. What now horrifies me is that if I buy the exact card again and put it in the system will the issue be solved, or has something gotten baked into the motherboard or Windows registry which might infect the other card too.

I also tried putting the disgusting 3070ti back in again and updated my drivers to the latest versions and then fully wiped them with DDU and then put my GT 1030 back in again and sadly the strain was still there. It's like something has set a "Dithering" switch in the GT1030 to "ON" and the is literally no command in any driver or anywhere with the command "Dithering=off" in its code.

AgentX20

If I can offer one more suggestion…

I was playing around with my good Win 10 1511 setup, obviously with a spot of trepidation while exploring updating a few drivers using a driver updater app. Most of my system has newer drivers available…

Although I didn't leave them in place for long, I felt like when I updated the chipset drivers, that eyestrain might have started. I reverted to the previous drives via restore point and (touch wood) things are good again.

I know it's not very scientific… but perhaps something to try is to NOT install the manufacturer mobo/chipset drivers. Just use the basic Microsoft versions.

Maybe something to try…

BloodyHell619

AgentX20

I had tried uninstalling my chipset and mobo drivers prior to this and even installing them from my mobo DVD, but I did a deeper search, found an AMD uninstaller and used that even though the description stated clearly that it doesn't delete chipset drivers, but I used it just to be sure. It made no difference. Then I found the Microsoft uninstaller and used that, uninstalling the drivers one by one with it. It made no difference either.

Right now, I am saving for the only option that's left that I can think of. I'm going to buy a new CPU with an integrated GPU. A Ryzen 4000G or 5000G series, probably. This way, the graphic card will be taken out of the equation. I am hoping that that integrated GPU doesn't dither, or I'm able to disable its dithering with "Ditherig".

Have any of you done this? Do the integrated Ryzen GPUs dither, and if so does "Ditherig" really disable the dithering for good? Do you think this might actually work?

AgentX20

Sorry to hear it didn't work.

I think Ditherig only works on Intel GPUs.

JTL

AgentX20 Dihterig theoretically has functionality for some AMD GPUs, but if it actually does anything with an implementation on a given chipset is a different question.

BloodyHell619

@AgentX20 Yes as @JTL said v2 of Ditherig now also supports some AMD GPUs.

@JTL @AgentX20 Do you or anyone else here know any AM4 socket AMD CPUs with integrated GPUs that don't dither at all?

By the way, today I tried one more thing which didn't work either. I installed Linux mint on my local drive and switched its driver to NVIDIA so that I get the dithering option and from there I disabled dithering, but it made no difference.

JTL

BloodyHell619 @JTL @AgentX20 Do you or anyone else here know any AM4 socket AMD CPUs with integrated GPUs that don't dither at all?

I've never tested those so I can't comment. Sorry.

Lauda89

BloodyHell619 I had a ryzen 1700 + RX480 that was perfectly fine with some W10 version like 1809 and previus and 21H1.
Then I tried to change the CPU and mobo with a ryzen 7900 and i am not able to use that system more then 30 minutes. I've tried to clone the old SSD in order to have the same OS / driver, tried different GPU the integrated one, RX480, 970, 1660 SUPER and 4070, nothing work for me.
I am convinced that the problem is the MB/BIOS.

BloodyHell619

Lauda89 This is what horrifies me. Even though I have placed my card in another system, and it still gave me eye strain, I feel like it's something I got baked into the motherboard that infects every card I put in my system and this is so devastatingly sad because I literally have to trash this pc and get a new one whole.

@Jack Yes sadly I have tried all those methods and registry hacks and sat behind my pc without turning my monitors off, but the disgusting pain was still there.

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