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

[SMohd2]

A bit of bad news. I was told that no work has been done on the Standard VGA driver with brightness control and display out capability. The Intel development team may not even do it. This is really disappointing.

I do have some plans on how do we might move forward from here, but will share it later. Right now, I am very interested to hear about this new potential solution by lucio. I have been reading the thread in the ledstrain.org forum on the icc color profile, definitely worth exploring.

I do need a bit of time before I can start testing this. I have returned my loaner laptop to my IT department a few weeks back. But after finding out about this potential solution, and i have requested and (thankfully) got it back. So I now I have a laptop that I can use to test this solution. However, I need some time to do my usual setup i.e. making sure no PWM is present, and trying to use the laptop for several days first to establish a baseline on the eye strain level for this laptop, before I start experimenting and installing/changing profiles and drivers. That way I can tell if the changes in icc profile helps to reduce/eliminate my eye strain or not.

In the mean time, @lucio15 perhaps you can try to install the icc/icm profile from my old 2011 driver into your laptop/PC and see if it works. I have posted the link to download that driver in page 4 in this thread:

/thread/53309?start=45&tstart=0 https://communities.intel.com/thread/53309?start=45&tstart=0

Its the link that points to the mediafire page. That's the one with the old 2011 graphics driver.

[TIssa]

Hello everybody !

Good to see I'm not the only one in this situation. I just received my new laptop yesterday, a MSI GE62VR, and it caused me eye strain and quite annoying headaches. I've never had any similar problem before with any screen or laptop, whatever in which situation I was using them (low ambient light, high brightness or not, high levels of blue), and I actually have a pretty good vision. Now with this new laptop its like my eyes can't focus properly on things. Its not blurry or anything but I've got constant discomfort when looking at the screen (was even worse while playing video games). It's like a constant tension in my eyes, which are trying to focus and adjust to the screen but cannot manage to do it, that eventually give me headaches. I tried to play with colors/brightness adjustments (MSI software provide a pretty good panel for it) but it didn't really help much. Same for the refresh rate (maximum at 60hz) or the font size, etc...

Can someone tell me the main "solutions" or advices that have been found in this thread ? I installed an older version of Intel HD Graphics (from October 2015) but didn't see much difference. I am actually not sure if HD Graphics is the problem on my laptop, I'll try to plug in my second monitor this week-end to make some tests. I'll try to change the brightness settings as well (DPST, adaptive brightness), as recommended, and install even older drivers just to see but I am not really sure where my problem comes from.

Thank you in advance for your help, and keep looking for solutions!

[DKour]

Modifying the PWM frequency *when possible* has produced the most tangible results for me on any given machine that causes me eye strain and headaches. The best solution however has been to stick to machines that never caused me any discomfort regardless of the driver version installed and other settings. I am not sure exactly what it is about them that is better, but the ASUS I have mentioned in previous messages causes me no problem at any brightness level, despite the fact that it "fails" the blur trail test (and thus uses PWM).

By the way, I have some more news to report. I have recently tested a netbook carrying AMD Radeon and it has irritated my vision possibly in one of the worst ways I have experienced so far. So the problem is not limited to intel.

[TIssa]

Thanks, that was quick! Do you know if its "safe" for the screen to change the PWM ?

There is no such option in my laptop so I guess I have to use IntelPWMControl, do you have a link for the Windows 10 (64) version ? I'll try all these stuff tonight and give you feedback.

[DKour]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure that it is safe for the screen. Maybe it is even dangerous for one's health for all I know...

The original IntelPWMControl didn't work for me so I used one of the modified versions mentioned in this forum:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/software-tuning-performance-optimization-platform-monitoring/topic/540658 IntelPWMControl

Sadly I don't remember exactly which one and I don't know if they contain any viruses. All I know is that my AV did not spot anything.

I'm sorry if all of this is not very reassuring but I cannot take any responsibility by mentioning things I am not very familiar with. It's as far as I have been able to go myself...

[TIssa]

So I tried pretty much everything yesterday: change the brightness/colors options, keep it at maximum brightness, tried a even older version of Intel HD drivers and eventually modify the PWM frequency using IntelPWMControl. None of that really helped, keeping the brightness at maximum allowed me to use my laptop few hours without excessive eye strain, but at the end of the day that was still pretty painful (headaches, eyes tension, ...).

Made some research about my monitor and it appears that it is a LG LP156WF6. The PWM frequency is maxed at 1kHZ (and it was already at this value when I opened IntelPWMControl) but it's still pretty painful to me. I think I'll just have to send my laptop back and go to a shop to see if I can find any other laptop with a better screen

[SMohd2]

Just like to share what I have learnt on this eye strain issue. There are 2 known / main sources of eye strain:

1. Screen flickering caused by PWM
2. Intel graphics driver

If you just bought a new laptop and find yourself getting eye strain, then your source of eye strain could be PWM, or could be the intel graphics driver, or (like in my case) it could be both. If intel graphics driver causes you eye strain, chances are PWM will also cause you eye strain. Either case, you need to eliminate one cause of eye strain at a time, to see which one affects you, and to see if both affects you.

In my case, my laptop has PWM, and I knew that PWM causes me eye strain. But I managed to find a solution to get rid of the PWM on my laptop, and I can use my laptop without eye strain for hours without a problem. After using the laptop for 1+ years without a problem, I upgraded the intel graphics driver, and immediately I get eye strain. I cant look at the screen for more than 5 minutes before I get eye strain. Nothing else has changed, only the intel graphics driver was updated. When I reverted back to the old (2011) driver, the eye strain gone. That's how I know for sure it was the intel graphics driver that is causing the eye strain.

In your case, if your new laptop is causing you eye strain, first, you need to check if you get eye strain from PWM, or graphics driver, or both. Here's how I suggest you test and find out:

STEP 1 - Check if your laptop / display has PWM flickering or not.

• Set the brightness level to 20%. Use your camera phone and record the screen (older camera phones the better, as some newer phone camera has advanced software that can counter the flickering from showing on the phone's screen). If you see your laptop display flickering on your phone, that means your laptop display has PWM. Increase the brightness to 50% and 80% and see if you see flickering from your mobile phone camera. Use the Blur Trail test to double check the result: http://www.testufo.com/# test=blurtrail http://www.testufo.com/# test=blurtrail Chances are, you will see them, as most laptops nowadays has PWM. If your laptop does NOT have PWM, do let me know the model as I have been searching for a flicker free laptop for quite some time.

• Next, increase the laptop display brightness to 100%, and look at the camera phone screen again. If you are lucky, at 100% you should see no flickering at all. That means, you have eliminated one potential source of eye strain. Then you can go to Step 2. If you are unlucky, meaning at 100% brightness, you still see flickering when recording on your phone camera, then you need to use IntelPWMControl to increase the PWM frequency to a level high enough that it eliminates the flickering. I have had hit and miss with IntelPWMControl. You need to google the file and download from multiple sources. The first 2 files I tried did not work. The third one I downloaded from a different source actually worked. Unfortunately, it was quite some time ago and I cant remember which one it was. You have to try it all yourself. Once you got IntelPWMControl to work, and you see no more flickering on your mobile phone camera and on the Blur Trail test, then proceed to Step 2.

STEP 2 - Check if Intel graphics driver is causing you eye strain.

• If you have successfully completed Step 1, that means PWM is now out of the picture. With your display brightness at 100%, use your laptop to see if you still get eye strain or not. If you find the brightness at 100% is too bright, download a third party software (like Powerstrip) to artificially reduce the brightness of the screen using software, then start using your laptop for long periods of time. I recommend using the laptop at least 1 hour at a time, for several days. Sometimes the eye strain will build up over time. From my experience, the only way to know for sure is to use the laptop for at least 3-4 days. If you still get eye strain, then chances are that the Intel Graphics driver is causing you the eye strain. To confirm if this is true or not, reboot your laptop to safemode or use Standard VGA driver (instead of Intel Graphics HD driver) and use your laptop again. Laptop in safemode also uses the Standard VGA driver. If you can use the laptop for hours without any eye strain using the Standard VGA driver, then it is confirmed that the Intel Graphics driver is causing you eye strain.

• Note that this works in Windows 7, but some user reported that in Windows 10, even using Standard VGA mode still causes eye strain, but I do not know if that person has eliminated PWM from his laptop or not. You can give it a go. You can use your laptop in Standard VGA mode for your daily use if it does not give you eye strain, but you loose features like brightness control etc, cant use projector etc. You can google on how to use Standard VGA driver in your laptop.

Sorry for writing such a long post. But I think to be fair to Intel, we (eye-strain sufferer) need to be sure that the eye strain that we are suffering is from Intel Graphics Driver (alone) and not from PWM also. This is important so that Intel can come up with a solution that works, and for us to be able to test the solutions and provide our findings accurately.

[SMohd2]

To Intel team, I believe the solution to the eye strain caused by Intel Graphics Driver need to come from changes in the graphics driver itself, and not just by changing some settings. In my case, no settings were changed. Only the graphics driver was updated, and I got eye strain after updating the driver. There is something in the new driver, some added features, some new way of rendering graphics, or something, that is causing the eye strain. Need to find out what these are, for us to try eliminate one possible cause at a time. Alternatively, perhaps you can start with the Standards VGA driver, which is the most basic driver, and start adding new feature one at a time, and let us test it everytime a new "feature" is added from the Standard VGA driver. That way we can test which of the added feature is causing the eye strain.

The tester of these solution also need to be sure that PWM is not an issue in their laptop, so that the only source of eye strain comes from Intel Graphics driver, and not from PWM.

Just my thoughts...

[DKour]

After many tests I'd say that what Kray_62 is saying is just about right. I also suspect that this driver characteristic that causes eye strain has found its way into the driver for Linux and OSX somehow more recently. I installed linux and windows on my macbook (for which the blur trail test shows no PWM) and I get eye strain, which I also get from OS X Sierra. OS X El Capitan I could work with, but I have just downgraded to Mavericks and I am amazed at how comfortable my eyes feel with it. I have noticed you mentioned contacting apple about problems with apple hardware and that the linux driver is maintained by the community but, at the end of the day, my macbook has an intel hd 4000 chip, so I believe that this piece of information is relevant and up to you to communicate to your partners and colleagues if you so choose.

[TYama28]

Hello,

I am new to this thread. I am suffering eye strain on my X1 Carbon 2016.

Kray_62,

>After using the laptop for 1+ years without a problem, I upgraded the intel graphics driver, and immediately I get eye strain.

Just a hypothesis, what if 2013 Intel driver doesnot set 100% brightness even though you set it to max? Do you see PWM flickering when you set 100% brightness with 2013 driver?

I think about why VGA driver can avoid eye strain (VGA driver doesnot help for me, though). VGA driver is common among any graphics cards so it doesnot control anything about brightness. When we boot system with VGA driver the LCD brightness should stay 100% (depends on panel); can avoid eye strain.

[SMohd2]

[quote]Just a hypothesis, what if 2013 Intel driver doesnot set 100% brightness even though you set it to max? Do you see PWM flickering when you set 100% brightness with 2013 driver?[/quote]

I'm not sure if a graphics driver can change the PWM setting of a laptop display screen, perhaps Intel can confirm this. Regarding your question, it has been quite some time since I installed (and uninstalled) the 2013 driver. If I recall, I think I did check to see if PWM was there after I installed the 2013 driver, because I was puzzled why suddenly I was getting eye strain, so naturally I thought PWM was the issue (because I have not yet realized that the intel graphics driver was the cause at this point). It wasnt until later that I realized that I only get the eye strain after installing the intel graphics driver. When I reverted back to the old 2011 driver, the eye strain disappear. I was very very lucky that I did a backup of the old 2011 driver (using a third party software called DriverExtractor) before I upgraded the graphics driver, at least was able to revert back and make my laptop usable again.

[TYama28]

Kray_62,

Thank you for the answer. We cannot change brightness with VGA driver; I think Intel driver should have some control for backlight PWM. According to your post you are sure that 2013 driver caused eye strain so I wondered if the wrong-maximum-brightness setting (by Intel driver) caused eye strain. I will wait for comments from Intel guys if they know anything about maximum PWM freq in their driver update history.

My situation on X1Carbon 2016 is:

- Setting 100% brightness eliminates PWM flickering (confirmed with Blur trail)

- Then I lowered brightness by software (http://www.nelsonpires.com/software/dimmer/ Dimmer - Small and free screen brightness reduction utility for LCD/TFT/LED monitors), working on Win10

But I still feel eye strain in 5 minutes. I am wondering if the cause is this specific LCD panel itself, rather than Intel driver or PWM. The panel is Panasonic's VVX14T058J00. I ordered a different LCD panel (LG's LP140QH1-SPF2) to see if it can save my eyes. I will post the result later (will be in Jan. 2017).

I wonder if specific LCD panel potentially causes eye strain for some people. If you (the readers in this thread) are interested in the panel vendor of your laptop, you can check it with the following freeware:

https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php

No need installation. Just extract files and run, check "Monitor Name" field in Monitor tree list.

[SMohd2]

doradaemon

It's good that you have eliminated PWM from your laptop. If you are still getting eye strain, that means there is something else that is causing the eye strain. I suspect it is the graphics driver. You have tried the Standard VGA driver and it does not work? But I see you are using windows 10. I read that other users reported that using Standard VGA driver on Windows 10 would still give eye strain. If you are willing, you could install Windows 7 on your laptop, if anything, just to see if using Standard VGA on Windows 7 gives you eye strain or not. At least you will know for sure the causes of your eye strain. Might be easier/cheaper to downgrade to Windows 7 than to buy another LCD panel.

Since you have bought another panel already, if you have changed the panel and your eye strain is gone, that would mean that you do not get eye strain from graphics driver, and that the cause of your eye strain would be from your original X1 panel. To me, this would be even more disturbing, because that would mean that even with no PWM, certain LCD panel can still cause eye strain. I curious to know the result of your test.

But if you change your LCD panel and you still get eye strain (at 100% brightness = no PWM), then it is very likely that it is not the LCD/PWM that is the cause of your eye strain, but the graphics driver. In which case, you might probably want to downgrade to Windows 7 first while waiting for Intel to come up with a new driver that does not cause eye strain.

Out of curiosity, is the X1 your new laptop? Were you able to use other laptops before this without eye strain? If yes, can you share what was the laptop specs.

[TYama28]

Kray_62,

Thank you for the comment. Uh, I misunderstood about VGA driver I mentioned in my comment. As you pointed, on Win10 there is no VGA driver and Microsoft Basic Display Driver (MSBDD) is the driver I used for test. I have no Win7 license and install method for my X1; I willnot be able to test VGA driver. Through the test, I noticed MSBDD didnot change anything for screen brightness so before replacing display driver from Intel to MSBDD, I set screen brightness to 100%, the brightness stayed at 100% on MSBDD, so there should be no PWM. After that, I rebooted system, then the screen brightness changed to some default, such as 50% (Changing brightness feature with Fn key doesnot work on MSBDD; I cannot verify the actual brightness value), means PWM was enabled. Here is a confusion, other people tested VGA driver (maybe it was MSBDD if their system is Win8 or Win10) but we donot know what brightness was set before replacing driver and whether reboot was done or not. We might be better to clarify the brightness setting (whether PWM is actually enabled or not) when we test VGA/MSBDD driver.

I have been using various laptops for 25 years (My first laptop was CGA (monochrome)), and this X1 is the first laptop I feel eye strain. Before X1 I used Thinkpad X200s, which also used Intel driver, but had no eye strain. Will post new LCD panel result in no distant future.

That is unfortunate we have been discussing this matter from 2014! 2016 is ending now. Hoping people get a good eye's rest in 2017.

[CNeub]

hey there all. good for us that more and more people join my thread. However not good for any of you if you're suffering from the eyestrain issue.

I once again want to distinguish that the reason of our eyestrain isn't some option that we can adapt in the intel graphics driver GUI. The reason is very probably coded deeply in the graphics driver code. I do not say this with levity - I've done so many tests, tried out so many set ups - everything with the same result -> eyestrain.

However I can agree with some of you that an ASUS notebook causes me less eyestrain than every other manufacturer I've tried out so far, but the eyestrain is also there.

I've started this thread in 2014. I think its time in 2017 to find a solution.

[DShor]

I found a solution to my Intel eyestrain by turning on high contrast mode (reply # 136). The black background doesn't give me the eyestrain of the bright white background. I've gone black and am not going back to white in 2017 (just like BO).

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13862/windows-use-high-contrast-mode https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13862/windows-use-high-contrast-mode

[CNeub]

well I know about the high contrast mode and that this mode is maybe a workaround for the eyestrain problem. However do you want to use this mode all the time? I think its a pretty annoying mode.

[JLee176]

Did intel provide any divers that do not cause headaches yet?

[SWill12]

Hi, I am working through my issues with LED monitors.. I have a hard time looking at them on laptops or monitors. They strain my eyes. So I was thinking about what was happening. I do know from experience with VGA monitors that at 60Hz I get eye strain. So I wanted to see what was flashing on my laptop screen. My reasoning is if there is no flashing then my issues could be focus related. Using my iphone SE, I took slow motion videos of my X200 laptop. I found that at less than full brightness the screen rolled. So PWM was in effect. I then set the laptop to full brightness and the screen picture stopped rolling however I found that the colours rolled. This means to me that dithering is happening with the colours as they flash from one colour to another to simulate the third colour. My next step was to eliminate the flashing both for PWM and dithering so I bought a Benq GW2270 VA monitor. I shows no flashing of colours for dithering and has no PWM as evidenced by the slow motion recording on my iphone.

My next trial is looking at the monitor for 10 minutes at time and seeing how I feel. It is set for 20% brightness and 75% low blue light. For the first week, I noticed small muscle strains in my eyes that went away by the end of that time. So the second week, I increased to 20 minutes. This time I had more eye strain that I related to muscle strain. By the end of the second week, I found that my recover from the eye strain had improved so I wasn't feeling it after a few minutes off the monitor. I did 20 minutes again for another week and I still have some eye strain that goes away after an hour. I will do another week at 20 minutes and then up it to 30 minutes.

I think this secondary eyestrain is related to the fact that I wear progressive bifocals.. On them the close work is in a small visual area. Where I look at a large area of the monitor and so my eyes move more so I think that is contributing to this bit of eye strain. I am going to keep on with this as I need to move from VGA monitors so it seems like I need to retrain my brain and exercise my eyes to look at them.

For this thread, I think that maybe the intel drivers have changed the PWM and/or dithering rates to something that we are not comfortable with.

[DKour]

I repeat that I've had a much worse problem with a Radeon card. It took me two weeks to recover. Other than that I seem to be suffering more with Windows 10, even though the issue has propagated to Windows 7, MacOS and Linux boxes with intel hd adapters. I think that the intel driver is definitely to blame (updating the intel hd driver introduces the problem on machines that previously caused me no eye strain) but I suspect that it also has to do with other factors such as the hardware and the operating system.

I don't think that the companies involved care much though. Intel has already told us that we should limit our expectations in a previous post on this thread. I have just gone into survival mode, trying to stick to products that don't hurt my eyes. For the moment, not updating macbooks beyond OSX Yosemite and sticking to ASUS machines carrying GeForce and Surface tablets for Windows seems to help me work like in the good old days, when there was no such issue.

[ØPede]

Just bought an Lenovo ideapad 110 with radeon AMD A8-7410 prosessor. Its pretty cheap and screen Is only 1280*720 max. It comes with windows 10. So far I can tell you theres absolutely no eye strain. The machine is cheap built but at least its comfortable to watch. I only wish the cpu was faster.I can't tell if it will work for everyones eyes but at least it did for me. Link to machine: https://www.komplett.no/product/892311 Lenovo IdeaPad 110 15.6" HD - Alle PC-er - Komplett.no