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

AgentX20

Just a small data point about my hassles above. I have a picture file that I used to use to check that my system wasn't dithering - clearly showing very clear banding within colour gradients on my previously working system setup.

I just opened the image last night and lo and behold the banding appears to be gone…

So in my case, despite the fact that I am back on my full working image (OS, drivers, hardware etc), upgrading the OS and video drivers, then rolling it ALL back to a previous OS backup, it has left me with a video card that is now dithering by default.

ensete

Rule Zero for us" When you find a setup that works and is pain free, never change it. Ever.

It is quite common for drivers to make changes to firmware settings on a device that will be persistent across driver rollbacks. I have done voltage measurements on hardware that prove this.

You can search the manufacturer site to see if they have a firmware flash utility and an old version you can download and flash but this is not common.

AgentX20

ensete Yeah I know all about not changing things… having been at this business for years. It was a moment of weakness and frustration, combined with the knowledge I had a good backup. I've also never personally seen the physical hardware change, though I've read about it.

I have some old VBIOS images saved (they're no longer on Gigabyyte's website) so I've tried several reflashes of the VBIOS (both of them on the card) without any improvement. This is the bit that really surprised me, even though it probably shouldn't have.

Every time in the past when I've struck trouble - be it OS versions, drivers, motherboards/CPUs etc I've always found a way back to a working setup. I have one option left - swap out the video card for a similar model from one of my kids' computers. There's a reason why I collected them… fingers crossed.

Staycalmsyndrome

AgentX20 When performing a BIOS downgrade please make sure that ALL blocks are programmed(downgraded). It is advisable to use a DOS bootable flash drive and add additional parameters to the flash utility for the missing blocks.

This is how they appear in the windows utility(for AMI Bios):

This is a tutorial for ASUS motherboards containing a link to the files needed on the usb drive. By opening "Autoexec.bat" in notepad, you will see "afudos.exe bios.rom /GAN" where "/GAN" means program the whole bios but isn't thorough enough in my experience.
Replace "/GAN" with "/p /b /n /e /l /k /R" where "/p" = main bios , "/b" = boot block, "/n" = nvram, "/e" = EC block, "/l" = all rom holes, "/k"= non critical blocks and "/R" = preserve ALL SMBIOS structure during programming. Add "/x" to not check rom id. If some blocks are missing in your BIOS, it might give an error and skip the entire process. Need to delete the specific parameter and restart.

A properly reflashed machine will reboot several times.
To boot the flash drive you may need to enable legacy boot of storage devices in bios.
Always make a backup of your current bios!

AgentX20

Staycalmsyndrome Interesting… I will certainly have a closer look at both my motherboard and video card to see if I can be more thorough. Thanks very much for the pointers.

AgentX20

Staycalmsyndrome I've finally sat down to try the more complete BIOS reflash on my ASUS Z97 motherboard and I can't make it work. Each of the three BIOS images I've tried, using the DOS Boot Flash drive approach, have failed to start the flash with AFUDOS reporting "1e secure flash function is not supported on this file". They are appropriate images for this motherboard, but no joy.

The only thing I've seen folks do to combat this is use third-party flashing tools and I fear that's making things rather more risky.

Oshim

REPLYING TO THE ORIGINAL POST!

That is why I told you it is not your GPUs and your monitors! It's how the current OS version draws these frames on your screen…

It will take a lot of trial and error but once you find that sweet combo of OS build + GPU driver you'll be in heaven!

One last thing that I discovered recently - if you have a G-Sync/Freesync GPU & Monitor - ALWAYS ENABLE G-Sync/Freesync!

It mellows down everything displayed on your monitor even more.

I wish everybody luck in finding the holy grail and take care people!

Staycalmsyndrome

AgentX20 If the bios file ends with .CAP extension that means it's capsuled and write-protected.

Remove the capsule header from the modded *.CAP BIOS file and save the BIOS as *.ROM file. The removal of the capsule header can be done by a BIOS tool called UEFITool (you can get it here).

Open the *.CAP file, do a right-click onto the listed "AMI Aptio capsule", choose the option "Extract body…" and save it as *.ROM file.

Note: Due to the removed capsule header the *.ROM file is a little bit smaller sized than the original *.CAP file. This is normal and nothing to worry about.

AgentX20

Staycalmsyndrome Yup thanks - I did all of that on each of the three BIOS images I tried ie xxxx.CAP -> bios.rom, copying it to the DOS flash drive. I made sure I also applied your recommended command line switches. After booting to DOS from the flash drive and AFUDOS reads in the image, it then bails out with the error described.

As a further test, I used the BIOS' built in EZFlash to apply the oldest of my BIOS (CAP) images, which it did happily. (Sadly, that didn't fix the eye strain either - not that I really expected it to at this point).

Staycalmsyndrome

AgentX20 Just use the windows utility and check all blocks.

I would suggest to always flash in a pure DOS environment.

AgentX20

Will do. Thanks.

Staycalmsyndrome

AgentX20 The idea of this procedure is to return a previously usable machine to it's former state. Should always test on a secondary working setup though.

AgentX20

Staycalmsyndrome AFUWINGUI v5 didn't run, so I fell back to version 3. I did a Flash of my oldest BIOS image and it failed the verification pass. This had me VERY worried as it said DON'T REBOOT until you get a successful flash. I tried the next newest BIOS version and that seemed to work and verified OK. With some trepidation I rebooted and it's been fine.

However, the baseline eyestrain remains.

Time to put on my thinking cap about how I can revert things to a working state……

smilem

Any update about this? Did bios flashing helped? Have you considered hardware programmer instead to flash mb and gpu bios?

AgentX20

smilem Hi - no I've not made any progress.

Flashing the mobo (apart from being very very scary with various failures, and an inability for some of the tools to actually flash various BIOS versions I have saved) and flashing the video card have not produced any changes in output that I can detect. I'm not familiar with other methods of flashing.
I've tried another 970 of the same model/version number/RAM that I purchased recently and that was no better. Maybe the previous user also had it "up to date" driver wise. I do have a couple of others that are in my kids' PCs that I could try but I've not gone there yet.
I've tried multiple versions of Windows 10 and 11, with a supposedly good GPU driver without any "ahhh this is good moments"
I'm using the recently discussed dithering disabling tool and that DOES seem to help a bit.

All in all these various installs are sort of "OK" in that they're not aggressively bad. Instead they all seem to generate low level eye strain over a period of time. Perhaps useable - perhaps not so great. Trouble is, I just end up thinking maybe it's me… but then my trusty 10 year old Macbook Pro running Mojave is still paper-like and easily useable all day.

Of course this was all complicated by me also trying to dial in a 43" Sony TV at the same time without any real success. It was OH SO close but had the same low level strain effects. Perhaps this was what it was being sent rather than the TV but it's always hard to know.

I'll keep tinkering and my next attempt is a fresh vanilla Win 10 1511 build…

simplex

AgentX20 I'll keep tinkering and my next attempt is a fresh vanilla Win 10 1511 build…

hi, what your final thoughts?

I tried to use z690p instead of z390d (new CPU but same GPU, also and iGPU mode only) with old monitor, and all variants gave me eye-strain.

Moreover, I recorded pixel movement, and found no difference in 8bit mode

gregtsakil9

Hello world! I also have a 970 G1, and it seems after days of trying to figure out what is bothering me, causing me tiredness and dizziness symptoms, I’m down to two possible causes: the horizontal polarization of my two monitors, Dell G3223D and Dell G2724D, or the fact that I upgraded two years ago to an ASUS Strix 3090 that might be causing me issues. I have my main office PC with the 3090 and my home PC with the 970 G1. Now that I have spent an hour reading and using my 970 with my Dell 27, it seems that I don’t have those bad symptoms.I will try to put my 970 with my 3090 to get picture from my 970 and use 3090 on high demant aplication or games and see If I solve my problem.

There is a difference on my 970 that I see in the NVIDIA Control Panel: I can’t do 10-bit. Maybe that takes care of the probability of hardware dithering that might cause issues. Another thing that I might try is getting a CPU that has a GPU and connecting my displays to it to see the results.

What do you guys think? Would that be a possible solution to our problems?

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

gregtsakil9 I will try to put my 970 with my 3090 to get picture from my 970 and use 3090 on high demant aplication or games

Probably don't do this, I remember earlier in this thread someone tried to pair two Nvidia cards and it caused the older one to also get permanently messed up from that point onwards (even after they stopped pairing them)

JimK

gregtsakil9 Which motherboard are you using the GTX 970 with?

gregtsakil9

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

Im trying them now to see if it helps me I have 2 of them ..what is the best way to test that it doesn't do that terribly temporal dithering ?

gregtsakil9

I placed my 970 as main output for my monitors with my 3090 ..I feel like for a couple of hours I felt better but after some restarts I think im starting to feel the same effects tha I had with my 3090 alone …Im whaiting for a microscope tommorow I cant whait to see whats going on ..1st test 3090 then 970 then older computer with win11 and intel with ditherig. app.

simplex

gregtsakil9 im starting to feel the same effects tha I had with my 3090 alone

me too

try minimizing the application assigned to 3090 to tray to feel relief 🙂

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