Lauda89

then i roll back to the 8002 (the starting point) and then i tried to roll back to something old like 1701 or something like that

return to the old bios returned (normalized) the situation with eye strain?

Are you able to find the difference between

unfortunately no 🙁 I'm just trying to understand: if the version of the main BIOS affects eye strain, is it possible to definitely fix the situation by returning to the old BIOS?

for example, on the Intel platform, an unambiguous return to the previous version (by regular means) is not always possible: https://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z370%20Pro4/index.asp#BIOS

"* User will not able to flash previous BIOS once upgrading to this BIOS version."

As I understand it, this is due to updating ME (Intel Management Engine) as part of the BIOS. What is the analogue of ME in AMD and whether this component affects eye strain is an open question for me ..

      glvn No that PC is still not usable for me unfortunately. So now i am using the new PC 13700K+RTX 4070+W11 21H2 with patching my right eye, and is almost ok but still not usable with 2 eyes.

      To downgrade the bios, I followed this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwJS8-GTgRU

      Using AFUDOS!

        16 days later

        async Switched lightning setup in the room since the last time it worked fine? Move the computer by the window, test the devices outside.

        Sadly it still strains me massively in day light and with no lights on at all.

        AgentX20 Any chance you could dig out an older firmware for your video card and refresh things at that level? (They can be rather hard to find these days, and it is complicated by some cards having not one but two VBIOS slots).

        Honestly I even tried flashing VBIOS's of other cards onto my card but it still made no difference.

        So I had my brother bring me a CPU with integrated GPU compatible with "Ditherig", a Ryzen 5700G CPU hoping that I could disable the dithering using "Ditherig" but it made no difference. I am in utter aw and broke as hell. Whatever the heck is going on is at the motherboard level. The strain is also definetly there even in the bios screen. But What I don't get is why does my GT 1030 strain me when used in another system?

        It feels so stupid to have to go and buy the exact same motherboard again. And there's so many factors to take into account as to how to set it up then. I'm really fucked up. Should I put my old CPU in it or my new one? Should I buy a new GT 1030 too? What a freakin hell of a situation….

        I also used a microscope my brother brought me on my monitor to check for dithering and it clearly is dithering horrifically. Can't post the video here.

        Tried the same monitor paired with my dads old laptop that doesn't dither and the monitor wasn't dithering.

        I could almost see the screen dither and when I read text on it for many seconds afterwards I see after-images, horizontal lines crawlling down everywhere I look.

              BloodyHell619 Yeah, I confirm, I have faced with the same effect. As soon as I update motherboard painful BIOS or insert "infectious" video card and then I cant repair normal state as before. The only thing that helps is to restore previous state regarding components and firmware and then reinstall windows|OS and in doing so, you have to disable update system even down to disconnecting any kinde of network.

                9 days later

                You know what I'm just thinking now? Maybe it wasn't the dual GPU trick that fucked up my system in the first place. I got my gtx 970 back from my friend and so the card was on his system with a very recent mobo. maybe his goddamn mobo infected the card and it got passed on to my mobo. If there is 1 thing thats for sure now its that the mobo is the god damn defect.

                BloodyHell619 How about the power supply? Try plugging the computer and monitor directly into the wall if you're using some kind of multi extension cord.

                Also consider trying a higher or lower monitor cable, test display port vs hdmi if available, or try changing hdmi or display port version on the monitor or bios. After digging into EDID and display driver suff on Mac I realized just how many different types of compression and changes can happen there, based on what bandwith or capabilities the graphics card and os thinks are worthwhile to use.

                    8 days later

                    maybe his goddamn mobo infected the card and it got passed on to my mobo

                    That is not possible.

                    A BIOS upgrade itself won't do anything to a video card. However an upgrade can change settings. Have you gone through every page and tried every setting in the Bios? particuarly anything to do with PCI-e timing or anything related to video card voltages

                    I've been getting various messages from a couple of games about how my vulcan graphics driver was too old (Win 10 1511, 970 card and driver version 391.55). Now this has been a good strain-free setup for a long time now, apart from it starting to age out re various bits of software and eye strain with a few Unity games.

                    But I've got backups… so I thought just this one time I'd try a newer driver… 411 something… uh-oh eye strain feelings detected. So I pushed on trying another even newer driver version 441.12 or similar. It still felt a bit off - those games were running though.

                    Sadly after a couple of days I knew this wasn't going to fly with creeping eye strain. Next, I rolled back with a bare metal restore from backup. And… it STILL felt off. Yikes. I've tried a few more sessions and the eye-strain is definitely there and significant.

                    Everything's exactly the same as a week before my driver shenanigans. But now there's eye strain. You start to wonder what those newer drivers did to my graphics card.

                    So all I can try now is a full ground up reinstall of 1511… (fingers crossed)

                    I really am my own worst enemy. I KNEW I shouldn't have messed with my setup. But sometimes you can't help but get so damn tired of all the eye strain everywhere and not being able to run big screens, big graphics cards, and better mobos/cpus.

                    But it DOES make you wonder what kinds of settings can 'stick' on your graphics card, much as has been discussed in this thread.

                      6 days later

                      So I've now done a ground up OS installer rebuild of my PC - exact same hardware and using the same Win 10 1511 OS installer as was working OK for me before.

                      Sadly, I am still getting bad eye strain. The eye strain is even evident on a pure 1511 install before ANY (1511 related) patches are installed.

                      I am now utterly convinced that a new Nvidia driver HAS changed something fundamental in my graphics card.

                      I did try reflashing both VBIOS with the same version so see if that helped but no joy there.

                      I'm dejected… and my only hope is that one of my spare 970s doesn't exhibit the same problems. Trouble is they're in live PCs that are running the newest graphics drivers, so I'm not optimistic.

                      • glvn replied to this.

                        AgentX20

                        Sadly, I am still getting bad eye strain.

                        I did try reflashing both VBIOS with the same version so see if that helped but no joy there.

                        I have one stupid, weakly reasoned idea 🙁

                        Reflash the MB BIOS (not VGA) at least to the same version. Some people in this forum claimed that flashing the MB BIOS to an older version helped them. I assume that it could have helped them not to reflash the old version firmware, but the flashing procedure itself (this is based on my old experience, when the firmware update procedure could additionally clear the service areas of the BIOS, like DMI...)

                        This is a very big assumption for modern UEFI BIOS, but I have no other assumptions: where which ones can be saved settings when completely reinstalling the OS.

                        To be completely sure of the purity of the flashing, it would be a good idea to buy a clean BIOS chip and flash it on a hardware programmer (this is a lot of trouble, don't go down this path if you haven't done something like this before). This may be necessary, since I am almost sure that updating the BIOS in the standard way is does not provide a 100% guarantee of rewriting all UEFI modules/areas. I don’t know if I was able to convey the main idea with my English...

                            glvn To be completely sure of the purity of the flashing, it would be a good idea to buy a clean BIOS chip and flash it on a hardware programmer (this is a lot of trouble, don't go down this path if you haven't done something like this before). This may be necessary, since I am almost sure that updating the BIOS in the standard way is does not provide a 100% guarantee of rewriting all UEFI modules/areas. I don’t know if I was able to convey the main idea with my English...

                            You're not crazy. I know for a fact in some cases internal settings of the firmware can be persistent across supposed resets, so I wouldn't be surprised if software based flashing doesn't clear everything either.

                                JTL

                                in some cases internal settings of the firmware can be persistent across supposed resets

                                is this fact from the "world of x86" hardware?

                                what year is it approximately? (UEFI or BIOS)

                                • JTL replied to this.

                                    glvn is this fact from the "world of x86" hardware?

                                    Yes

                                    what year is it approximately? (UEFI or BIOS)

                                    Hard to say. I think it's a generic property of certain UEFI BIOS's, so starting sometime past 2010 would be my best guess.

                                      glvn Reflash the MB BIOS (not VGA) at least to the same version.

                                      I'm not optimistic but it's worth a shot. Thanks for the suggestion.

                                      • glvn replied to this.

                                          @AgentX20 Oh boy do I feel you mate. You cannot belive how much I wish I could go back to that day when I stuck that wrecked 970 into my system. My life has been a total wreakage since then. And a huge peice of advice DO NOT STICK ANY OTHER CARD IN THAT SYSTEM. Every card I have put in that system now dithers even if I put it in aonther system!! You will be stuck in a cycle like me infecting card after card, PC after PC. I have tried every possible BIOS version that works with my CPUs on my PC and the horrific dithering is still there. I am convinced that there is now one and only one solution and that is to buy the exact same mobo and vga and replace my infected ones. I do not know what the fuck NVIDIA has done, how the fuck they have made this shit stick so hard in our systems. I messaged them again the other day about this issue and begged them to give me a solution. I even begged them to just tell what in my PC has gotten infect so I could replace it. They no longer even respond. The issue was marked as "researching" for weeks and then it just got flared as "unresolved" without even a word of reply.

                                          async I have tried all that mate. Nothing worked. different PC with different power supply, different screen, different outlet, ….

                                            first, a quick Google search showed the presence of the entity NVRAM in UEFI BIOS(not CMOS)

                                            NVRAM is a special data area that stores those UEFI variables that have the Non-Volatile attribute set. The most popular variables of this kind are Setup, which stores most of the current settings from the BIOS Setup

                                            you can try to view these variables from EFI SHELL, http://www.opslib.com/2012/01/efi-shell-commands.html

                                            dmpstore     -- Displays all NVRAM variables

                                            set         -- Displays, creates, changes or deletes

                                            default         -- Sets, Resets, or Clears default NVM values

                                            pci         -- Displays PCI devices or PCI function config space

                                            maybe the names of the variables will tell you something about setting dithering..

                                            and secondly (for example), the AFUDOS flashing utility has an additional key /N - clear NVRAM

                                            This is not an instruction manual, the utilities for flashing and the procedures for flashing the firmware itself are very different for different MB

                                              glvn

                                              Are you implying it's possible to stop dithering by changing nvram variables ?

                                              • glvn replied to this.

                                                  Liberator005

                                                  I'm trying to logically understand where the dithering setting can be saved if a clean reinstallation of the operating system does not help with this (and reflashing the VBIOS too).

                                                  NVRAM - suitable place for this

                                                  AgentX20

                                                  "Load BIOS defaults" or ClearCMOS in modern UEFI BIOS should perform some kind of cleaning of the nvram, but I’m not sure that a complete cleaning of this area is performed. You can try this before reflashing MB bios.

                                                  "I am still getting bad eye strain" Is there this feeling on the UEFI BIOS setup screen?

                                                        glvn

                                                        Maybe the dithering setting is just hardwired in the gpu hardware ?

                                                        Though if the software "ditherig" works (at least with intel gpus), it must be changing the setting somewhere. Could the software "ditherig" have access to nvram values ?

                                                        • glvn replied to this.
                                                            dev