eye strain

[CNeub]

hello,

I have a Notebook with Intel Core i7 4710 - Intel Graphics 4600 and external Nvidia Gforce GTX 850M for about 2 weeks now. I connect the Notebook on two different places per HDMI with nearly three year old lg monitors. With my old Notebook (Intel Core2Duo and Nvidia Gforce 9500GT) I had not any problems with this two monitors. However when I connect one of the two monitors with my new Notebook I get eye strain and headache. Of course I use the right resolution FullHD and tried out different brigthness and contrast adjustments in intel graphic properties. OS is Windows 7 Prof x64 and the newest drivers are installed. Version:15.33.22.64.3621

Nearly two months ago I purchased an other Notebook with Intel Core i7 4700MQ - Intel Graphics 4600 and Nvidia Gforce GT755 M. I had the same problem there and so I sent it back, because I thought that the Notebook has an defect. I tried out Windows 7 and Windows 8 and had the same eye problems in the two different OS.Now I do not really know what the problem exactly is, because I have these problems with two different Notebooks on two different external LG Monitors and the integrated Displays of the Notebooks. But I thinkt the problem is the Intel HD 4600. Maybe that there is something wrong with the driver.Do you have any ideas about this? Couse I can't purchase and send back new Notebooks all the time.

Sorry for my bad english

[PCons1]

Try the 4279 production driver if on Win 7, not 4300. This 4279 has a "creamier" effect on the monitor backlight. I've also noticed that later versions seem to oversharpen the fonts and so forth. This will not be visible on a software magnifier, only a physical camera for side by side comparison. No version is perfect, but 4279 is usable. Filename is win64_15407.4279.zip and the SHA1 hash is db 06 02 4a 7f eb c6 45 8c 6f c0 bc 0b aa 86 3f 1c 44 c9 24

[DKour]

Hi everyone,

I think that Kray_62 has been more prudent than me, taking time to see if the 4300 driver resolves the issue. After many days I have realised that it is also causing me eye problems. It is much better than the latest driver mentioned above, but still I cannot say that the situation is perfect. I am even wondering if it is not just the driver, but also some specific models of hardware (screen, adapter chipset, or both) that is actually causing the issue. I have worked on many machines with the intel chipset and have had no problems. My Toshiba Satellite has always felt a little strange to look at though, come to think of it. The first couple of years I was playing with the brightness level a lot, depending on the time of day. It always tended to be a bit too bright, which serves me right because I specifically selected a model which would be bright enough for me to use outdoors. So I do not know if there is a solution. I am considering replacing it now.

[SMohd2]

Hi _dimitri_

Sorry to hear that you still get eye strain. Yeah, sometimes when you first use it, it seems fine at first. But after using for longer periods, sometimes after a few days or even a week, usually that's when you can really know if you get eye strain or not, at least for me anyway.

By the way, there is something that I was wondering about your case. You mentioned that when you first bought the Toshiba laptop, you can use it without eye strain? If yes, that means either your Toshiba laptop does not have PWM, or your laptop do have PWM, but you do not get eye strain from PWM (only from graphics driver). Do you know which one is it?

Do you mind checking if your Toshiba laptop has PWM or not? The easiest way to test is to set the brightness of your laptop to 50% (or 20%), and go to this website: http://www.testufo.com/# test=blurtrail http://www.testufo.com/# test=blurtrail

and look at the screen. If you can see multiple separate vertical lines moving across the screen, that means your laptop has PWM. Now try again with the brightness set at 100%. Do you still see multiple separate vertical lines, or just one big thick line moving across the screen? And when you use your laptop, at what brightness do you normally set the display?

Sorry for the many questions. It would be helpful to know as much as possible about your eye strain case...maybe there is something there that can help find a solution, or at least have a better understanding on how this issue affect different people.

[DKour]

Hi Kray_62,

I checked the website you have mentioned. I always see multiple lines, regardless of the brightness level, but they tend to become one thick line when I switch to 100% even though not completely (I can still discern them). So I guess my machine does have PWM. I am not sure why I did not get eye strain the first year or so. Maybe it's the driver, but, even the earliest one I could find (earlier than 4300) is not perfect. I am thinking, maybe there was always a problem and I developed the sensitivity to it with the exposure over a period of time.

I hope my answers can help in some way. If there is anything else you would like to know, don't hesitate to ask!

[SMohd2]

Hi folks,

I have tested the 4300 driver, using the same laptop as before, the Lenovo T450. All testing were done using ac power (except for one time using battery), auto brightness off, adaptive brightness off, screen brightness at 100% (to eliminate PWM). Power setting at "maximum performance" for both ac power and battery (all settings the same for both ac power and battery).

Day 1 - used the laptop for 1.5 to 2 hours.

Day 2 - used the laptop for 40 minutes.

Day 3 - started using laptop at 10pm, finished at 10.40pm (on battery, but power settings always set to max performance)

Day 4 - started using the laptop at 9.00pm, finished at 10.00pm - 1 hour

Day 5 - used the laptop for 1 hour 15 minutes

Conclusion: This driver do cause eye strain, but it is "mild" eye strain, and not as bad as other drivers.

To be honest, at first it was not easy to call this one. Sometimes it does not seem like giving me any strain at all, but after using the laptop for a while (e.g. more than 15-20 minutes), I get this discomfort feeling on/in my eye balls. I can feel something (which if there were no eye strain, I should not be feeling anything at all). It is not exactly painful, but more of a discomfort of the eyes. Its not so bad, but it is not eye-strain-free either. I can use this laptop with the 4300 driver longer than the default/latest driver, which is known to cause eye strain, but a mild eye strain is still an eye strain. So I personally will avoid using the 4300 driver, mainly because I can still use my 4-year old lenovo T420s laptop with Intel Graphics 3000 using the 2011 driver, which does not give me eye strain whatsoever. This is my current primary laptop which I use for my office work. The Lenovo T450 laptop is just used for testing the driver for eye strain.

But for those who does not have an old laptop that they can use without eye strain, it would be worth to try this 4300 driver. It may not eliminate your eye strain completely, but (for me at least) it can reduce the level of eye strain from looking at the screen.

To intel team, I suppose you can still study this 4300 driver (which causes only mild eye strain) and see what has changed from this driver compared to the latest driver (which causes the "full" eye strain). It might help, but I think the best way to find the root cause is to investigate the one driver that has been confirmed to not cause any eye strain whatsoever, which is this driver I posted earlier:

8.15.10.2476 - driver date 9/8/2011 - no eye strain, I can look at the screen for hours

.....and to compare it with the driver that is known to cause eye strain, which is this one:

9.17.10.3347 - driver date 31/10/2013 - eye strain within a few minutes of looking at the screen

It might have a long change logs, but so far, this is the best, and so far I think maybe the only way to find the root cause of this whole issue. You can find and buy a used Lenovo T420s laptop with the following spec: 1600x900 resolution, non-touch, 8Gb RAM, Windows 7 Professional, Service Pack 1, 64-bit, Intel Core i5-2520M @ 2.5Ghz, Intel HD Graphics 3000. And install the 2 versions of graphics driver I posted, and you should be able to re-create the issue, and investigate from there.

Anyway, that's it. Feel free to ask me any questions on this.

[RonaldM_Intel]

Hello all,

Thank you so much for all your input. I would have never asked for that much testing from you if we could experience this eye strain for ourselves.

I am constantly providing all this information to our next level of support, in order to narrow down what is causing this issue for some of you. As you already saw, I am trying to set a base-line with a recent driver (8.15.10.2476 is way too old) in order to track changes that could have triggered this issue for some.

Just to recap, so far _Dimitri_ hasn't experienced eye strain with driver .4300, and Kray_62 only a mild eye strain. Can the rest of people following this thread let us know your experience with driver .4300? Due to the subjective nature of this issue, the more people help us the better.

Regards,

[SMohd2]

Hi Ronald_Intel.

No problem. I dont mind spending time and doing a thorough testing on the driver, as this will not only help me, but will help many other people as well.

You mentioned that _dimitri_ is not having eye strain with this driver. From what I read, _dimitri_ started with not having eye strain with the 4300, but later he posted that "After many days I have realised that it is also causing me eye problems". Refer to his post on the 7th page of this thread. So I interpret that after many days of using his laptop with the 4300 driver, he is having eye strain as well. But like he mentioned, the 4300 driver is better that the latest driver. Can you confirm this _dimitri_? If true, then that is pretty similar to my findings when using the 4300 driver as well.

It would definitely help and expedite finding the solution if one of intel team member is having eye strain from PWM or driver related as well, so that you can experience the eye strain yourself and can quickly find the cause of it. But to be honest, I am glad none of you is affected, as I honestly can tell you, it is a real pain to be suffering from this eye strain. It can severely affects my ability to do work (which relies heavily on using laptop all day), lucky I have one (old) laptop that I can use without eye strain whatsoever. I cant even buy a new laptop, as most laptops I tried give me eye strain as well. Many other people are in the same boat as me.

In _dimitri_'s case, it is even worse. He started as not having eye strain at all (even no eye strain to PWM), he can use his laptop for a year without any problem, before developing the eye strain. That means he is one of the (estimated) 95% of the population, who has now joined the 5% who suffers from this eye strain. I hope the 5% doesnt grow any bigger.

By the way, _dimitri_, you can use your laptop for a year, and you only started getting eye strain after you upgraded your OS to Windows 10 and i assume you also upgraded all your drivers as well during the upgrade. So very likely the cause of your eye strain is software related. What year did you buy your laptop? You mentioned that you cannot find your old/original driver from the website anymore. Maybe the intel team here can find in their archive the intel driver from the year you bought your laptop, maybe that driver does not cause eye strain. We can test it to confirm. It may be worth to try.

[DKour]

Hi Kray_62,

I've had the exact same experience as you, indeed. No eye strain for a while, so great improvement with the 4300 driver, but still I get eye strain after using the machine for a prolonged period of time.

As a matter of fact, I am pretty sure that I have had no problem (or maybe I did not realise, it is hard to tell) for a few months even after upgrading to Windows 10. I became aware of the issue only a few months ago. I have installed the earliest driver available from intel that works with my machine and that still did not resolved the problem. It was more or less as good as the 4300 driver and definitely not as bad as the latest one.

[JGold7]

Ronald_Intel,

Looks like the answer is "everyone still experiences strain with 4300, just not as bad as some other recent drivers". This is my experience as well.

You (Intel) made a change to drivers around late 2011 or early 2012 which broke my ability to use laptops. I found one screen (in my Lenovo X220) that seemed mostly unaffected. It's an IPS panel with a wide color gamut, which leads me to strongly suspect opportunistic FRC(Temporal Dither).

I have many laptops and systems to check.

Additionally, ALL MACBOOK PRO SYSTEMS have been affected since late 2011/early 2012 as well. So this change clearly also has an impact on the OSX drivers, if that helps you narrow it down at all. Again, my strong suspicion in this area is temporal dithering, since I can actually SEE the pixels dancing around on some lower-resolution models. But it's also well known that Apple forced FRC on for all Mac displays regardless of driver or color depth around that time, so this may be of limited usefulness to you.

Someone who is not photosensitive (like some of us in this thread, or epileptics) would never see a problem unless trained to do so. I have a friend who has learned to see the thing that makes my eyes hurt... but it doesn't bother him at all. He can see it, though, which is huge. And it's definitely a flickering/strobing/dancing of the pixels, which screams out temporal dithering to me... but I won't rule out other things as also being an issue.

[jve]

hello!

so happy i found this tread! i was thinking i am going crazy

i recently purchased Dell Latitude E5450 with matte full HD IPS screen and Intel HD Graphics 5500 (Windows 7 Pro)

Just in first few hours I had for the first in my life enormous eye strain. I did everything - color calibration, tests,updated my drivers, etc...

After reading previous comments, I have disabled my Intel Graphics drivers - and no eye strain!

So what drivers should I install now...? 😕

Also, I did PWM test and I too see separate vertical lines

Frame Rate: 20 fps, Refrashe Rate ? Hz, Pixels Per Frame 16, Pixels per Sec 304

My 8 year old Dell Inspirion 13 - No seprate vertical lines, 60 fps, 60hz, 16, around 900

also my screen fails sharpness test on http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/sharpness.php http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/sharpness.php

my old laptop passes it almost perfectly (and it has much lower resolution, tn panel etc..)

I think it's definitely not just drivers... But disabling my graphic drivers did help...

I am thinking should i just return my laptop while I still can.... so disappointed

[RonaldM_Intel]

Thank you Gurm for your input here.

We are reviewing this data internally, and I'll let you all know when we have an update.

To sleeplessoul, I would suggest taking advantage of the fact that your laptop is still covered by the warranty and get a replacement. If it is from a walk in store, then have them test the new one in from of you so you can confirm that it does not give you eye strain.

Kindest Regards,

[SMohd2]

Ronald_Intel and Gurm ,

It seems that 2011 is the year that first triggered all these eye strain. I strongly believe the root cause can be found in those 2011 drivers. If it is difficult to trace back that long in time, then why dont we do a process of elimination? Let's try a driver without Temporal Dithering and see if that reduces or eliminates the eye strain or not. At least we can confirm or eliminate Temporal Dithering as a potential cause. Ronald, is it possible for intel to develop a driver without Temporal Dithering (or just remove it from an existing one) for us to test?

sleeplessoul

If you disable Intel Graphics, that means you are using your laptop on the Standard VGA driver, or Microsoft Basic Driver (depending if you are Win 7 or 8). I too, do not get any eye strain from using both of these basic drivers. These basic graphics drivers, with its minimal features, do not contain features/elements/components or whatever it is that is causing the eye strain, but the "full" intel driver has them. Although it does eliminate the eye strain, it does come with several disadvantages - the graphics is slow, no brightness control, and you cant connect your laptop to a projector. Which is why I cant use the Standard VGA driver for office work.

_dimitri_

Here's something that you can try which might help reduce your eye strain. Another potential cause of eye strain could be the monitor driver. Try check what kind of driver your laptop is using for the monitor. Go to Control Panel -> Device Manager -> Monitor and see what it says there. If it says LCD, try uninstalling that driver (it may take some time to uninstall it), restart your computer, and Windows will automatically use the "Generic PnP Monitor" driver. This is similar to the Standard VGA driver for graphics card. It might help. I noticed that my old Lenovo T420s, which I do not get any eye strain whatsoever, is using the Generic PnP Monitor driver. I am trying this out on my newer test laptop as well, which is the Lenovo T450. Before you uninstall your LCD Monitor driver, you might want to do a backup of it first. Google DriverExtractor and download the program from grandutils.com. That's the program I used to backup my 2011 graphics driver.

[hk5]

I also have eye strain when using laptops having hd graphics 3000 (hp dv66c43cl ) and hd graphics 5500 .

Same when these are connected with external dell display.

But in my desktop pc of 2010 with hd graphics (version 8.15.10.2900) there is no eye strain at all.

I am not able to use laptop for long period because of this and when I see this forum i was happy that steps would be taken by intel.

Some upgradation/modification after hd graphics 2000 might be causing the problem.

When hd graphics is disabled there is no eye strain.

Expecting correction for all versions from hd graphics 3000.

[CNeub]

Well It's a long time I wasn't here in "my" thread.

First of all its a pitty that I couldn't try out the mentioned driver with less eyestrain now, but all what you said, is totally the same I detected so far. There are some Intel drivers since 2011 which give me very much eyestrain and there was also a Intel based notebook with a special driver which gives me less eyestrain, but it was also impossible to work on it for hours.

So I hope that intel will find a solution soon, since there is very much activity here now.

[DShor]

I would like to be added to the 5% (then 1% ). My Dell Studio 1555 recently got hit by ransomware so I had to reinstall Windows 7. I thought I would be smart to install it from scratch instead of from the recovery partition; it was delivered in 2009 so I thought I would get the latest drivers instead of all of the old software. Everything got reinstalled with the latest drivers but I suddenly couldn't use the laptop without eyestrain; I had used it in its original factory config for years without eyestrain. I even went back to my 2003 Thinkpad T40 with Radeon for some soothing screens; remember when screens were smaller yet taller.

I just uninstalled the "latest" driver for my 2009 laptop and went back to the factory loaded driver on the Dell Resource CD. When the old driver got installed, the gamma was set to 10 (range is 1-5)! Once I set the gamma back to 1, the screen looked normal again and my eyes started relaxing again. I'm nearsighted and wear glasses.

Here are the "good for my eyes" 2009 drivers:

8.15.10.1749 dated 5/6/2009 (builtin Windows 7 driver)

8.15.10.1808 dated 6/3/2009 (driver originally installed on Dell Studio 1555 and Dell Resource CD)

Here's the "bad for my eyes" 2009 driver:

8.15.10.1968 dated 10/22/2009 (latest driver on Dell website)

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=R264627 Intel GM45 Video, Mobile Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, Mobile Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD, v.8…

[DKour]

Thanks Kray_62, for the suggestion about the monitor driver. My computer is already using the generic PNP driver. As a matter of fact, the only solution I have found for the time being, in order to completely avoid having eye strain, was to completely uninstall the Intel driver for the display adapter and just use the generic VGA driver. I am also using a software solution to sort of dim the display (it is too bright like this) because, without the Intel driver, Windows cannot regulate the brightness.

[PRome1]

_dimitri_, did you find that uninstalling the driver completely did something different than merely disabling it?

[DKour]

PeterJohn, I have never disabled the driver. I have always been uninstalling it completely to try other ones, so I wouldn't know. Of all the drivers I have tried (some are better than others) the only one that is not giving me any eye strain at all is the standard VGA driver. This is important because, as I have mentioned, I was beginning to suspect that there is something wrong with the hardware. Maybe the hardware does matter but, even in that case, it seems to me that it is definitely something in the Intel-made drivers that is causing the problem, even if that is in combination with certain video adapter / monitor hardware characteristics.

[DShor]

I was still experiencing eyestrain after downgrading the Dell Studio 1555's video driver. The only other video update was the BIOS; I had also upgraded the Studio 1555 BIOS to the latest version (A13). So I downgraded the BIOS back to the version it was delivered with (A08); I'm now experiencing less eyestrain with the original BIOS instead of the latest and not greatest BIOS. The fixes and enhancements listed for BIOS A08 include "enhance display quality". I guess the newer BIOS degraded display quality. The GM45 graphics BIOS version is now 1706 dated 10/28/2008; what changes were made to the GM45 graphics BIOS after this version?

Here are the changes made to the GM45 video driver since my 1808 version: Windows 7 (1827), xvYCC and Intel Turbo Boost (1834), Transcode Acceleration (1843).

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=Y9J00 Dell Studio 1555 System BIOS, A08 Driver Details | Dell US

[PRome1]

The tough part about this is that once my eyes are tweaked, it takes them a while to calm down, and during that calm-down phase, everything seems to make them angry. So it's tough to just try a new driver for a day and know that it is or is not causing strain.

I tried the 4300 driver and to the best of my awareness, it DID cause strain. So now I'm using 4279, and I THOUGHT it was causing strain, although I've been on it all day today and actually feel pretty well. We shall see.

[MSolt2]

Hello

In my laptop lenovo B50-80 with HD 4400 there was a problem with PWM when we had 80% brightness and there was strange blinking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuSc2S9SWjs miganie matrycy w Lenovo B50-70 z HD intel 4400 - YouTube

After service replace LCD panel there is no PWM and no blinking, so first please check on another LCD panel.

But eye strain remain

Regards