Hi,
Like many in this forum, I have been having trouble with monitors for quite some time and tried a lot of variations (Linux distributions, screen types, graphics drivers, graphics cards, kernel mods, etc.).
One thing which stood out is the way you boot into the system. The default option now a days is EFI and the older way is BIOS, which is often called the legacy bios mode.
I had been using the EFI mode for around 3 years now and whatever variations I tried never gave me strain-free experience. Since nothing is working out I tried using the (legacy) BIOS mode and it feels much better.
Since this (EFI) is a relatively new standard and became the default way of booting in the recent OS versions, is it the likely contributor to the strain with the latest machines?
Also, some of the posts on the net seem to suggest that several EFI implementations are buggy.
To check the difference in quick succession, I tried to boot a Linux live CD (say Arch or Manjaro) in both modes, and I can clearly see the difference between the two modes, even when the boot messages come. When booting from EFI mode I feel the text is not steady and simmering, not so when booting the legacy bios mode.
Could you please see if this makes a difference for you? You need to enable booting from legacy bios from the bios setup. You also may need to disable secure boot. But not sure what more needs to be done for Windows or Mac. Not sure if its even possible to disable EFI on these two.
Also, while we are at it, the following grub configuration gave me even better results:
Uncomment (remove # at the beginning of the line) the following:
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT=console
Comment out (put a # at the beginning of the line) the following:
GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD_LINUX=keep
You need to do update-grub or similar depending on your OS.
The above two things helped me with my Lenovo laptops with Radeon cards in Hybrid mode running Manjaro Linux out of the box. One is TN panel and the other is IPS.
Hope this helps.
Ravi