Dustpuppy Posted March 11, 2005 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 (edited) My laptop (see sig) is a Dell Inspiron 5000e and I really need to change the refresh rate. I can't tolerate 60Hz light, and whenever I use my laptop for longer than an hour or so it makes me feel tired and sick. The real prob lem is, I'm trying to write up my PhD thesis on this thing! A bit of googling has convinced me I can crank it up to 70 or even 75Hz without frying it, but I can't find how to. It's currently on 1024x786 resolution, but there isn't a modeline for that in Xorg.conf :unsure: Please please please help. I'll put you in my acknowledgements page if you do... Edited March 12, 2005 by Dustpuppy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havin_it Posted March 11, 2005 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Hey, if there is a way to do this I'd like to know too. I don't get any option to change the refresh in MDK or Windows on my Toshiba. (Didn't realise LCDs had the same flicker problem as CRTs, I must admit.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted March 11, 2005 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 You can go here to create your own modeline: http://xtiming.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/xtiming.pl I don't own a laptop or LCD monitor, but I also thought you couldn't set refresh rates for LCD's. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adamw Posted March 11, 2005 Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Yes, LCDs have a natural refresh rate and they'll only actually refresh at that rate. It's usually 60Hz. If you set it to anything else it'll work but the display might look a bit odd at times, as the graphics card is pumping out 85 refreshes per second and the display is only refresh 60 times...most of the time it doesn't actually matter but you get some decidely odd effects, the most obvious can be seen if you go the the shutdown dialog on Win2K, when it turns the entire screen 'grey' by checkerboarding single black pixels across the display. this looks _distinctly_ odd with a mismatched refresh on LCD. anyway, practical upshot is, don't change it. LCDs don't work like CRTs, low refresh rates don't cause eyestrain or headaches. In a CRT when the display refreshes that means the entire display is actually redrawn. LCDs don't do that. The elements on an LCD display don't need to be constantly refreshed, if you tell them to be 'on' they're on, permanently, not needing redraw, till you tell them to turn off. So the whole display isn't flickering very slightly all the time, like a CRT. The 'refresh rate' on an LCD is just how often per second the display is updated to the actual image that's in the graphics adapter. Even if you had a 1Hz refresh rate on an LCD screen you'd see something on the display the whole time, it would just only be updated to match what was actually supposed to be on it once a second. If you had a 1Hz refresh rate on a CRT you'd see a sudden flash of the image for a few milliseconds, once every second. Sorry, I rambled a bit, hope that was clear. executive summary - it's not the refresh rate on the display giving you a headache and making you tired or sick. It's something else. Eat your greens and get more sleep. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dustpuppy Posted March 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 11, 2005 Arrrrrrrrrgggggggghhhhhhhhh!!! That means I do need new glasses after all. I was so hoping it was the display. Thanks for the explanation, I really appreciate it. And I'll be booking an eye test tomorrow. And I do eat my greens! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted March 12, 2005 Report Share Posted March 12, 2005 Thanks for the explanation adamw. Now I hope y'all were referring to collard greens :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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