I made a huge mistake building a new PC

Clokwork

I still have the old one thankfully. I went with an updated Nvidia 5070. My brain is in a state of cloudiness. Simply staring at the windows 11 Home Screen gives me issues. I tried gaming to see if it was different but nope. This next morning, I’m still dizzy somewhat. Mind you this is using the exact same monitor. My “safe” monitor.

I feel there is some aggressive flickering going on. I can’t focus well on any one part of the screen without feeling somewhat overwhelmed. I have read RTX cards (temporal) dither more aggressively than the older GTX cards. I’ve read the same about windows 11 possibly doing the same. Not sure.

Beyond reinstalling windows and buying a second 1070, has anyone had luck disabling temporal dithering on modern AMD GPUs? I can definitely sell and buy one if that’s the case.

I somehow thought I wouldn’t be in the affected group. I thought I could tough it out. I feel I’m going to be stuck in the past forever.

my hope is that SteamOS will have better options for drivers so that some of us don’t have to suffer anymore in order to game on PC. I’ve read Linux may give more customization of drivers to help with dithering so if that’s the case, I’d just have one PC for Linux, and another for steam gaming.

simplex

Clokwork second 1070

are you sure 1070 is okay?

Clokwork My “safe” monitor

which one and what settings

Clokwork

simplex I’ve been using my 1070 on Win 10 latest update for years with no issues. I have a Ben Q 2790. 8 bit, no HDR, IPS panel.

simplex

Clokwork Ben Q 2790

Could you check panel inside? Holding joystick press Power button, after power-up again press Menu, then F

1NGIBITOR

Clokwork That's quite lucky I can't use even gtx970 on windows 10. Only intel HD built in graphics and even that I can't use since may 2025 win 10 update. We are close to the moment where we won't be able to use PC no matter the screen. And with rtx cards I have same issues. They literally destroy my eyes in minutes. I also tried linux with my rtx 2080 and no luck there. Same devastating experience no matter what settings I tried to use. Besides nobody knows for sure what is the problem with modern graphics. Is it dithering or not? For example in media player classic for windows there is madvr renderer where you can turn on several different algorithms of dithering. I always used that dithering watching movies on PC and never had any problems and even now I don't have them if I use safe screen, video card, cable and OS version.

Clokwork

1NGIBITOR I plugged my monitor into the motherboards Display Port slot using the onboard graphics graphics and there was a clear night and day difference with the desktop background image. I could clearly make out the pixels as I have a 1080p display. Plugging the 5070 back in, there was no such gradation seen. Not just static dithering. There has to be temporal dithering going on for the pixels to become nearly indistinguishable. The background image looked spectacular but made me feel uncomfortable mentally. Neither AMD nor Nvidia offer a way to turn off dithering and it feels like a crime (dramatic, I know). I tried plowing through playing a game for a couple hours with friends and I payed heavily for it today. My brain feels, well, dumber. I could barely make out text in my tablet and phone this morning. I had mild headaches around my head. This is sad.

Sunspark

I'm very familiar with the video players and various renderers. For those dithering algorithms in madvr, I use ordered. It looks fine to me, and doesn't bog down the system like error diffusion does.

simplex

Clokwork desktop background image

Good note! Wallpaper in new GPUs look extremely smooth, "denoised"

ensete

Win 11 makes even more use of DirectX 12 than Win 10 did. DirectX 12 is a proven cause of symptoms for some of us.

The only solutions I have found are to run the display through a KVM switch that somehow modifies the HDMI signal (unknown exactly what it change) or go back down to Windows 7 and do not update it past May 2022 update which will force Direct X updates into the OS.

Clokwork

@simplex I would also like to add the following which seems to back up what I am seeing with 2 different PCs, 3 different GPU sources, and all using the same monitor/cable/settings.

The Role of the GPU in Dithering

Modern graphics cards from both NVIDIA and AMD have the capability to apply their own form of temporal dithering at the driver level. This is often done to improve visual quality, even when the output is set to a standard 8-bit color depth. The primary reason for this is to smooth out color gradients and reduce visible banding.

Even within the 16.7 million colors of an 8-bit signal, harsh lines can appear in smooth transitions, such as in a clear sky in a game or a gradient in a photo. To mitigate this, the GPU will rapidly alternate between two adjacent colors to create the illusion of an intermediate shade, making the gradient appear smoother. This GPU-driven dithering can sometimes be enabled by default in the graphics driver.