Refresh rate only 50hz? How to get 60hz(eyestrain+headaches!

[crushedumblr]

so i just got my x41 but i found anything longer than 20 minutes use and im getting bad headaches and eye strains from teh screen (im used to a 15 inch widescreen monitor), so i checked the display options and the maximum it goes is 50 Hz, anyway known to increase this to 60Hz?

thanks!

[crushedumblr]

Ive installed something called refreshlock, which can override your monitors refresh rate, I havent enabled it yet though, would this be reccomended? Can it do any serious damage?

[Temetka]

We'd love to help but we need to know what OS version are you running?

I'm going to assume it is some flavor of Windows and not Linux, because, well, because.

I am also going to assume that you have all of your drivers loaded for the chipset (motherboard) and the GPU (graphics).

To see if you have NOT loaded the drivers, right click on 'My 'Puter' then select manage. From there select 'Device Manager'. Is there anything with little yellow exclamation points next to it? Also while there go ahead and see what it says for your display adapter. make sure it does NOT say 'Generic PnP VGA' or something along those lines. It should say something like Intel 915 xxxxx.

If you are running Vista or 7 you can right click the desktop, select personalize, then on the bottom of the window select 'Display Properties'. From there click on the advanced button, then the monitor tab. There it should list your current refresh rate and might allow you to change it.

You should also be able to do roughly the same procedure in XP but I don't have an XP box setup at the moment to be able to verify that for you.

If you re using Linux as your OS then we need to know which distribution and version of it you are running.

[crushedumblr]

Im running XP. I went to display props but it only lets me choose between 40Hz or 50Hz. Which I think is very low

If I could bump it up to 60Hz it would help but im not sure if its safe to do that

[sojourner]

Recently bought an X60 with Intel graphics and saw the same thing, 50Hz refresh; couldn't believe it's sooo low. My X31 with ATI graphics is not like that so I wondered if this is something specific to Intel graphics

Also wondered how to bump it up from 50Hz as higher refresh rates ARE easier on the eyes! Hope someone can pitch in.

[serek]

Guys, you're using a laptop. It has a LCD screen. There's no such thing as screen flickering because of low refresh rate, so no eye strain. CRTs refresh whole screen according to their refresh rate, and that's what causes headaches and eye strain, while LCDs simply change the pixels that actually do change... Note that when CRTs were popular their refresh rate was usually their quality factor, while LCDs are advertised for their low latency time. You're either imagining things, or something else causes your health problems. It's definately NOT refresh rate.

[Neil]

Much of the discussion of refresh rate does not apply to the liquid crystal portion of an LCD monitor. This is because while a CRT monitor uses the same mechanism for both illumination and imaging, LCDs employ a separate backlight to illuminate the image being portrayed by the LCD's liquid crystal shutters. The shutters themselves do not have a "refresh rate" as such due to the fact that they always stay at whatever opacity they were last instructed to continuously, and do not become more or less transparent until instructed to produce a different opacity. Most of the TFT LCDs used in portable devices and computer monitors need a continuous refresh. The driving voltage determines the transmittance of the liquid crystal.

The closest thing liquid crystal shutters have to a refresh rate is their response time, while nearly all LCD backlights (most notably fluorescent cathodes, which commonly operate at ~200 Hz) have a separate figure known as flicker, which describes how many times a second the backlight pulses on and off. However they also have a refresh rate that governs how often a new image is received from the video card (often at 60 Hz).

[Droider]

I remember my x40 had 60hz refresh rate at xga. After swapping x41 mainboard to x40 display, it is only 50hz.

I flashed the X41 tablet bios found below to my X41 and 60hz is available again. It is day and night difference. No more eyestrain and cursor trails.