I have two workstation in different locations and on two I had problems such as you describe. And on both of them the problem was solved by changing the BIOS version of the motherboard.
I have a theory that this is due to poor compatibility of devices from different generations. For example, you have a 2018 motherboard and you put a 2022 video card into it. I think there must be desynchronization issues here.
In my case, it was too fresh a bios that was not compatible with old cards, so I had to roll back. It's on the first workstation.
The second one had to update the bios to the latest version. And after that my new 3070 worked fine. No eye pain, no graininess in pictures, no bad color reproduction.
UPD: Sorry forgot to mention that this was an answer in this thread https://ledstrain.org/d/1688-rtx-a4000-causes-eyestrain-with-true-10-bit-monitor/32, I just copy/paste.

    CepheiHR8938 Not sure how much I can help, but for research purposes could you list the motherboards, BIOS versions and GPUs in use?

        JTL I'm sorry, maybe I expressed myself incorrectly. I just shared this solution to the problem in the hope that it will help someone.
        On one station i have the following configuration:

        • motherboard: MSI B450 Tomahawk
        • cards: Gigabyte GT 730/Palit GTX 1060 (both of them had problem with new bios)
          Originally, it was installed first bios version and I had no problem with this configuration. But I decided to update bios to speed up my RAM (there is problem with old bios version) and after that I faced with eye pain. I began to look for a problem and tried a lot of things. In the end, nothing but returning to the old BIOS did not help. I tried all versions of the BIOS but only the very first one worked correctly.

        Second one station:

        • motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 HD3P

        • Palit 3070 gaming pro/Palit GTX 1060
          I bought a new video card (3070) and inserted it instead of the old one (1060). Immediately felt a deterioration in the screen image and eye pain. Manipulations with drivers did not help. After I got the experience of manipulating the BIOS in the previous workstation I decided to play around with this here. And surprise, the latest version of the motherboard BIOS solved the problem.

          One more recommendation, It's better to let Windows install its own driver for the current graphics card. After that, you can update the drivers but do not select the clean install option. And of course you need to use Display Driver Uninstaller. If Windows does not want to install its own drivers, try run some application that requires hardware acceleration for example a browser.

          5 days later

          What I use:

          • Windows 10 Home, Ubuntu 22.04, Manjaro 21.3, latest updates.
          • Asus Prime H410M-A, the latest bios.
          • Intel i5-10400F (without integrated GPU)
          • PNY Nvidia Quadro T600 with mini displayport to VGA adapter and mini displayport to hdmi adapter.
          • Two monitors: very old AG Neovo F-417 on VGA and ViewSonic VP2458 on hdmi. No problems with F-417 at all. ViewSonic has adjusted settings to make it bearable: brightness 0, contrast 45, color range Full (the same setting in Nvidia settings), color temp Warm and low gamma 1.8, no blue light reduction (it's a marketing trick).
          • Latest Nvidia drivers 517.40. Without Nvidia Experience. Linux also uses Nvidia proprietary drivers.
          • Mini display port to VGA adapter StarTech MDP2VGA2.
          • Mini display port to HDMI adapter Assmann GmbH.

          Eye problems are less pronounced on Windows than on Ubuntu. On Ubuntu I usually switch to VGA for both monitors or work just with F-417. For some reason, Ubuntu causes no problems with this monitor and this setup. Manjaro is the most comfortable with ViewSonic on hdmi connection.

          Desktop setup isn't a problem for me as of now. I sit around 6 feet away from a 32" lg monitor.

          I still haven't found a phone that I can use without problems. Dithering for me seems to cause bad headaches as well as pwm.

          I can use Amazon Fire HD 10 Plus for hours without any problems. I wish there was an android or iphone with the same screen/dithering.

          I am here with the focusing issue; seeing glows around high contrasted elements and feeling as colors were turning metallic. At least on bad hw/sw.

          For me mainly all the displays are bad that's produced after ~2017 when it comes to gaming monitors (tried only those), thus I'm forced to stick with some old dumb displays. Other PC HW stuff doesn't matter, nor SW-wise i.e. the kind of Windows builds, Linux, driver, etc.

          As for games, there are AAA titles, where this strange kind of rendering is used and visuals are feeling like the above mentioned, again since the magic date of ~2017…

          Interestingly then, business monitors/notebooks at my work are just working without any problem, no matter again the SW side, like OS, driver, whatnot.

          As I mentioned in another thread before, the iphone 13 pro max is working for me flawlessly after turning down the white point in the accessibility options. Tried the same method for games with Reshade, so the final result in the rendering chain gets the white point reduction, but no luck.

          Long story short (for my case at least); something happened around 2017 and noone knows/tells what.

          This kind (or part?) of "technology" seems not to be present in business, only in entertainment & co. And it is well… hidden away(?)

            tsb If what you say is true (not doubting you, just a for instance) the only way I can see making progress is if we have two setups, one of which is "useable" and does not have this changed rendering and one that does, and they are otherwise displaying identical content. Somewhat easier to find the "needle in the haystack".

            • tsb replied to this.

                JTL Yep thats the problem, i cannot find two identical “systems” having one with the thing ON, while OFF on the other. Like having an SW at two different build level, where the before-after effect could be witnessed. Or a display with old and new Firmware on it, etc. Its even harder, since I dont have problems with different Gpu Bioses, different Win/Linux builds etc.

                  I can still use any Windows 7 build just fine, all my home PC's are set up with Windows 7
                  For wok I have to use Windows 10 but patching allows me to tolerate it.

                  5 months later

                  I will use this thread to ask an interesting question.

                  Has anybody tried using a discrete GPU, but hooking up the monitor on the integrated GPU (intel UHD or similar)? This means, using the power of the discrete GPU, but running the display via the motherboard and CPU.

                  I tried this on my home desktop computer, and it seems to me that at least for Linux Ubuntu, the setup I had before (Ubuntu, GT1030, displayport) is now usable, that is, I can easily look at the screen for hours.

                    brjdenis Yes, I did that. But it turned out that Intel UHD it also causes eye discomfort but not as strong as on 3070. Now I am testing gt 730 + 3070 bundle.

                        CepheiHR8938

                        I heard about that, but in my case Ubuntu works really well with intel graphics UHD 630 in combination with Nvidia. Go figure…

                        I tried it on dell U2413.

                            CepheiHR8938

                            Hi, can you please advise how do you force windows to mark the lower end nvidia card as the power saving card and the other as high performance? It works fine with Intel vs. NVidia, but I'd like to achieve exactly what you have - GT 730 or 1030 as the power saving to which I plug my monitor and the main NVidia as the one doing the "calculations". Is there a way to force this somehow?

                            And do you see some clear difference between a 730 and a 1030? I'm going to buy one, unfortunately 730s have no longer NVidia support and I fear a driver conflict in windows 10.

                            Thanks a lot.

                                machala I was guided by this post https://ledstrain.org/d/2204-experiences-with-bypassing-rtx-dithering-with-a-second-vga
                                In short, it is done through the flag EnableMsHybrid in regedit. EnableMsHybrid must be set to 1 for high perfomance card and 2 for low in each partition related for each video card (0000, 0001). It is also important to find a common driver that supports both cards because it is not possible to install the driver for each card separately.

                                    tsb

                                    Main differences between business and entertainment products : 

                                    Screens and gpus. All nvidia cards are bad (subjectively to me ). Business often run on only intel (latest intel iris is also very bad for me though). 

                                    And then the screens, gaming screens are often oversaturated (very high color gamut), flicker more frequently (pwm), use different phophors with their leds (more modern ones that are supposed to be bad), have higher refresh rate. 

                                    In general, business products also run on older hardware. 

                                    Besides of that, there is not much difference.

                                      5 months later

                                      CepheiHR8938 I was guided by this post https://ledstrain.org/d/2204-experiences-with-bypassing-rtx-dithering-with-a-second-vga
                                      In short, it is done through the flag EnableMsHybrid in regedit. EnableMsHybrid must be set to 1 for high perfomance card and 2 for low in each partition related for each video card (0000, 0001). It is also important to find a common driver that supports both cards because it is not possible to install the driver for each card separately.

                                      A word of serious caution with this method:

                                      Use it on a system you don't care about!

                                      After using this method myself not only did my RTX 3070ti not stop dithering but my system now dithers with any card I have put in it. It literally infected my system and all my cards with dithering and I have still not been able to fix it.

                                          BloodyHell619 I recently caught the eye discomfort problem again due to installing a new motherboard bios. It was nothing being helped. I rolled back the bios, it didn't work. I reinstalled windows, it didn't work either. But then here's what helped: I did it all together. First, I prepared a windows installation flash drive with bios files beforehand. I deleted all the system partitions of windows to avoid booting into the operating system. I installed any other version of the bios other than the one that was installed (the one I needed) to be sure that the "corrupted" bios was exactly overwritten. After that, I installed windows and it worked.

                                            dev