higher refresh rate hurts eyes?

[beamerxl]

So I just recently started messing around with my monitor's refresh rate after hearing that low rates can cause eye strain. Mine was set at the Windows default, 60 Hz, so I bumped it up to 85 Hz, the highest it would allow me at 1280x960 resolution. However, after increasing the refresh rate it now hurts my eyes to look at my monitor, whereas back at 60 Hz it felt fine. I tried bumping it down to a middle setting, such as 72 or 75, but those hurt my eyes as well. Does it take time to get used to new refresh rates, or are my eyes wired wrong ? If 60 Hz is really as bad for your eyes as people make it out to be, I don't want to hurt my eyes, but it also doesn't make sense to switch to a setting that will give me headaches when I used to be fine...

If it's relevant, my monitor is a Samsung Syncmaster 997DF and my video card is a Geforce 6800 Ultra.

 

[OnEMoReTrY]

It takes time to adjust to new refresh rates, it's normal.

 

[narcotic]

upping the refresh rate is in no way going to hurt your eyes (on CRT's), if anything its just going to reduce eye strain. It is however possible that you addapted to the lower refresh rates, meanning your eyes are used to more strain, i.e. you make more effort to look at the monitor, but now when you changed the rate, your eyes are working harder with no real need, thus causing your strain. What you should do, is relax yourself, and try and let yourself adjust to the new improved refresh rate, and enjoy your screen. Btw, you can make a little expirement, if you have a video camera (or even a web cam), try filiming you monitor in either rate, and compare between the two, you'll see how much better (faster) the refresh is. enjoy.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Are there any flourescent lights in the area, where you are looking at the screen? It's possible, that by choosing a refresh-rate of something other than 60Hz, then the differing frequencies between the ambient light "flicker" and the monitor refresh "flicker", generate harmonic "beat frequencies", which can be percieved by the brain. So you might end up with a 15Hz "beat frequency" occurring occasionally between a 60Hz flor. bulb and a monitor set to 85Hz.

Alternatively, the monitor might not be able to properly handle the higher refresh rate, and shift the picture or be unable to focus and make it blurry, which can cause even more of a headache with some people than the flicker does. (I don't think that Samsung should have that problem though, it should be a fairly high-quality monitor.) What happens if you chose the higher refresh rate, but at a lower resolution?

 

[Peter]

85 Hz is still below the range where researchers found an odd slowdown in reading performance - this seems to occur somewhere between 90 and 100 Hz.

However, upping the refresh rate also drastically increases the contrast. You might need to tune brightness and contrast a lot lower than you're used to.

 

[Pete]

It's possible your video card outputs a blurrier signal at a higher refresh rate. Does text look any worse at 85Hz than at 60Hz?

If you want to make it easier on your eyes, set the monitor's color temp to 6500K.

 

[beamerxl]

There aren't any fluorescent lights around. I thought my eyes were starting to adjust, but after spending some time away from the computer and coming back they hurt again. I think I'll give it a couple days and see if that helps.

Text isn't significantly blurrier.

Also, is there any problem with using custom refresh rates? I read somewhere that you should try to set it 5 Hz lower than the maximum, just to be safe. 85 Hz is the max so I made a custom setting to set it for 80 Hz... is there any reason to stick to the predefined options? Like the thing where it syncs with other frequencies? 80 Hz actually seems to be a little nicer to my eyes than 85 or 75.