Monitor has wavy lines.

[cageymaru]

Trying to troubleshoot for my Canadian buddy. His PC had this issue before and after upgrading video cards. He went from a GTX 570 to a GTX 970.

Basically his monitor ONLY displays wavy lines when gaming. He says that the more demanding games create more waves. Batman makes big rainbows across his screen while Chivalry creates only flashing and smaller waves. On the desktop it is perfect and he says that the monitor is set to 1080p 60Hz in the Nvidia Control Panel. When gaming it's like his display starts flashing and then the waves come. Since he upgraded from a 570 to a 970 for Batman, it's not likely to be a video card problem in my opinion.

Do you think his power supply is running out of steam? Here are his specs. I live thousands of miles away so I can't check voltages and stuff for him. I can get him to install some software to do it though.

LG W43 series. 1080p monitor.
Coolermaster 850 Silent Pro power supply
Asus P8P67 EVO motherboard
Intel i5 3.4 GHz
Asus Nvidia gtx 570 ---> Asus Turbo GTX 970
16GB of Kingston 1600 ddr3 ram
120GB Kingston ssd primary drive
Seagate 1 terabyte sata

 

[Araxie]

I would start checking the cables... what monitor are he using through what port?. scan lines, overscan, flashing, wave lines, IMO are always related to a bad conversion between analog and digital. sometimes it's just a bad cable. and since he already changed the GPUs the only common variant in the issue are the cable and the monitor itself.

 

[cageymaru]

He says it is a HDMI cable and I added the monitor to the OP. Was still getting info when I clicked post by accident.

Wait he says that a friend says he needs a DVI cable because they have some converters going. (I'm literally learning all of this in real time on Skype).

 

[cageymaru]

I would start checking the cables... what monitor are he using through what port?. scan lines, overscan, flashing, wave lines, IMO are always related to a bad conversion between analog and digital. sometimes it's just a bad cable. and since he already changed the GPUs the only common variant in the issue are the cable and the monitor itself.

So now that I have this information that his monitor is so old that he has to have converters, I guess it is time for him to invest in a more modern monitor.

 

[Araxie]

so he is using converter, from HDMI on the card to DVI-D on the monitor ? there could be the problem..

 

[Araxie]

So now that I have this information that his monitor is so old that he has to have converters, I guess it is time for him to invest in a more modern monitor.

just changing the cable to a common DVI - DVI can be cheaper and solve the issue..

 

[cageymaru]

just changing the cable to a common DVI - DVI can be cheaper and solve the issue..

I was thinking this also. But I'm trying to get him to get a G-SYNC monitor because he has motion sickness and always complains about migraines and throwing up if we game for 2 or 3 hours together.

 

[Araxie]

I was thinking this also. But I'm trying to get him to get a G-SYNC monitor because he has motion sickness and always complains about migraines and throwing up if we game for 2 or 3 hours together.

if price it's a issue you can try with one of the BenQ Monitors with ZeroFlicker and high refresh rate. sometimes ins't just about smooth image, A lot of people find the solution to eye strain with this kind of monitor..

 

[evilsofa]

I was thinking this also. But I'm trying to get him to get a G-SYNC monitor because he has motion sickness and always complains about migraines and throwing up if we game for 2 or 3 hours together.

It's possible that the wavy lines are causing the motion sickness.

That being said, the usual cause of motion sickness in gaming is when the FOV is set too low in the game. Increasing the FOV should fix it. For a 16:9 monitor, horizontal FOV should be in the 90 to 100 range, but a lot of games default to 75. There are a few games that use vertical FOV instead of horizontal FOV, so here's a calculator for that.

 

[cageymaru]

It's possible that the wavy lines are causing the motion sickness.

That being said, the usual cause of motion sickness in gaming is when the FOV is set too low in the game. Increasing the FOV should fix it. For a 16:9 monitor, horizontal FOV should be in the 90 to 100 range, but a lot of games default to 75. There are a few games that use vertical FOV instead of horizontal FOV, so here's a calculator for that.

Thank you very much!