Blur Busters Forums

So I recently bought an Asus ROG Strix RTX 3070ti and just a few days into using it my eyes are being destroyed from pain all the way into my back. Reading around the net, I have found out that this could most probably be due to these cards having a sorta temporal dithering implemented into them.
As a little background of myself. I have to say, I am extremely sensitive to PWM. I don't think I have ever once in my life, from as far as I can remember, been behind a screen where I wouldn't get eye strain; from VA to IPS to plasma to Tube-backlit to LED-Backlit...

Yet I have had my eyes checked twice recently, and they were absolutely perfect.

These are the screens I have previously had:
Our home TV is an old "Plasma Panasonic TH-P50VT20R" (The PWM of this screen is pretty horrible and can even be captured on my phone) It strains my eyes heavily after like a day of staring at it.
I bought a "Xiaomi Mi Curved Gaming Monitor 34" like 2 years ago, only had it for a few weeks before I realized the PS5 does not support ultrawide resolutions, so I sold it. It was starting to give me eye strains close to the days I sold it.
After that, I bought a "Samsung TU7000" TV to use as a monitor. The experience was horrid. Maddening eye pain and nauseous feelings that took me weeks to recover from, as this TV has horrible PWM.
Then I bought a "Samsung LF24T350FHM 24 Inch Full HD IPS LED Monitor". OMFG this monitor is hell on earth for PWM sensitive people. It felt like someone was sticking electric rods in my eyes. Took me 2 months to recover from the pain of using this monitor for just a week.

After all that hell, I switched back to my 2 old monitors in a dual setup that I have been using for years:

A "FLATRON LG W2291VP" (this screen only strains my eyes if I sit behind it 24/7 for weeks) had this for probably 12 years
A "Samsung Sync master SN1943" (This screen does strain my eyes if I sit behind it 24/7, but it's tolerable) had this one for 5 years

Other GPUs I have used before the 3070ti, with no issues:
HD RADEON 5850
GT 1030
GTX 970

And my operating system is Window 10, if it matters.

Does anyone have a solution as to what I should do?
Should I pay and by a new monitor? Will it help with the GPU dithering?

I have been asking around the net, most specifically, on https://ledstrain.org/ and people are saying a new monitor won't help. It does seem logical, as the Dithering is being done by the card before it even hits the display.

Is there any freaking way to disable this goddamn function?

Is the card always doing it, or does it do it under certain conditions, like if the display that's connected to it is too crappy?

In general, what is your opinion for the least eye straining monitor for someone like me that is literally suffering from all of these display techs?

Where I live, stuff is super expensive. There is no way for me to test them before purchasing them, and there is also no way for me to return them.

I feel like motion is even making me sick now. I don't know if my eyes are just super strained or if it's always been like this.

The fact that these techs are being used so frequently now even in the most expensive products like the 3000 line-up makes me feel like I am failing to move on along the human evolution path, lol

I think you can disable dithering by using an app called novideo_srgb. https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/uploads/ ... 98c91c.png

If that doesn't work, try this one. https://bitbucket.org/CalibrationTools/ ... rc/master/

Boomchakadah wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 02:36

I think you can disable dithering by using an app called novideo_srgb. https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/uploads/ ... 98c91c.png

If that doesn't work, try this one. https://bitbucket.org/CalibrationTools/ ... rc/master/

I've seen this tool but not yet used. Was really curious to how it works or what it tries to resolve.
Thought dithering was in combination with the monitor but seemingly it depends on the GPU?
Does one have more details or information on what exactly GPU dithering is?

Kyouki wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 02:41

I've seen this tool but not yet used. Was really curious to how it works or what it tries to resolve.
Thought dithering was in combination with the monitor but seemingly it depends on the GPU?
Does one have more details or information on what exactly GPU dithering is?

That tool lets the GPU read data about the monitor's color space provided by the monitor's EDID, and adjust the color output accordingly. That allows wide-gamut displays that don't have sRGB clamping to correctly display sRGB content without the need for ICC profiles.

Dithering is essentially a technique that involves quickly alternating between two colors in order to produce the average of those two colors.

Boomchakadah wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 09:06

Kyouki wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 02:41

I've seen this tool but not yet used. Was really curious to how it works or what it tries to resolve.
Thought dithering was in combination with the monitor but seemingly it depends on the GPU?
Does one have more details or information on what exactly GPU dithering is?

That tool lets the GPU read data about the monitor's color space provided by the monitor's EDID, and adjust the color output accordingly. That allows wide-gamut displays that don't have sRGB clamping to correctly display sRGB content without the need for ICC profiles.

Dithering is essentially a technique that involves quickly alternating between two colors in order to produce the average of those two colors.

Really cool info, thank you.

Gonna test when I get home if I suffer from this using tools, do you have any recommendations?

Boomchakadah wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 02:36

I think you can disable dithering by using an app called novideo_srgb. https://forum.il2sturmovik.com/uploads/ ... 98c91c.png

If that doesn't work, try this one. https://bitbucket.org/CalibrationTools/ ... rc/master/

I contacted NVIDIA, and they claim that dithering is actually disabled on Windows.

I tried both those apps, and they did not help, but I learned a few interesting things.
1- changing the dithering setting in those apps does actually change the displayed image (The second tool has a test image, and you can clearly see the changes happen when switching dithering on and off.)
2- I Recorded my screen with OBS though, and in the video you can not see any changes happen. So this should mean that these apps are only adjusting the monitor's dithering, and they aren't doing anything to the card's output, right?
3- The apps have enabled/disabled/default for dithering, and it was interesting that setting it to default was like setting it to enabled, so my monitor itself is also doing some dithering it seems. Still, though, disabling it made no change to the eye strain, at least not enough to make it bearable.

Do you think that buying a true 10-bit monitor would solve the issue? The card wouldn't need to do any dithering then, right?

Did you ever try a true 10 bit monitor to see if it stops dithering?

There are over 100 ergonomic issues that are beyond "PWM", "Dithering", "Blue Light", etc.

More than 90% of people wild goose chase to a red-herring, falsely thinking their display ergonomic issue was X when it was actually Y.

Kyouki wrote: ↑

11 Aug 2022, 09:14

do you have any recommendations?

I doubt it's the GPU in particular. In the past I saw people on Apple devices claim that certain versions of IOS would cause eyestrain while others didn't. I always thought it was nonsense but I once transfered a screen from an IOS 15.7 device (which had no eyestrain) to a 15.4.1 device (which had higher but not unbearable eyestrain) and I swear that screen that didn't have eyestrain on 15.7 was now worse being transplanted to a 15.4.1 PCB.

So it may be possible if Windows or an Nvidia driver does something dumb with power savings or tampering with monitor attributes in an update it could cause some type of issue. I would try loading up the version of Windows I use: 20h2_v2 + an older Nvidia driver to test.

one thing i can say about the Nvidia driver, is that de newer ones, seem to add a lot more motion blur to the image. older drivers have a much better image clarity.