Ditherig makes my XPS13 - which was already very nice - a real joy. If only it were more powerful (it's last year's model, so a Core i5). My XPS15 gets BETTER with Ditherig, but not perfect. I am going to play with drivers. It's worth noting that the XPS15 has Anniversary edition of Windows 10 on it, which is worse on my eyes than standard Windows 10 (I've refused to upgrade on my primary machines since I have work to get done!)

I am going to try reinstalling the XPS15 with Windows 10 non-anniversary (I assume Windows 7 is not an option) which might make it much friendlier, and then roll back the Intel drivers to last year's drivers (which I use with much success on the XPS13). Adding ditherig on top of this may very well make this the ultimate machine for me... at least until I am forced to go to Anniversary Edition. 🙁

9 days later

Finally got Ditherig installed on my machine, I used the newest version (1.6). Can folks share the settings they used to achieve the best result? Did you need to reboot to see changes?

It should be IMMEDIATELY obvious. It kicks in instantly. If you see it running in the tray area, it's active. Your chip might not be supported, although it ought to be with the latest version.

OK, I will continue to use it and see how it feels. The laptop video card is an Intel HD 5500 which is listed as a supported.

  • Gurm replied to this.

    ensete It can also be the drivers. Also if you are running Windows 10 anniversary edition (any version higher than 1585) that can be the cause as well. I downgraded all my Windows 10 machines to 1585 and am doing much better as a result.

        Gurm I'm not runnig Win 10, and unfortunately since it s a work laptop I cannot easily change the drivers. Ugh

          Yeah, so the culprit is likely the latest Intel drivers, which are harsher than the ones from, say, a year ago.

            Gurm That's where I am learning. I'm going to try the standard VGA drivers, if that eliminates the issue I will try and get older drivers installed, if none of those work I will just have to live with VGA unless I can find a setup that uses a different video card out of the laptop. Apparently there is a whole little cottage industry of external video card setups for laptops, primarily for gaming performance, bt it could be an option for us

              3 months later

              Finally I am able to install ditherig on my laptop to test it out. I used the latest v1.7 version, installed the zip file and used the exe under the folder amd64. I tried the exe under x86 folder but it does not work, it gave a missing dll error. For some reason the exe under amd64 works, even though my laptop is not using amd processor or graphics card at all.

              Anyway, I right clicked the icon on the system tray, select the "Disable all dithering function". So I will test out for a few days to see if it reduces my eye strain or not.

              One thing I noticed that when taking a photo of the screen using my cell phone camera, I can still see the "shimmering" and checked pattern (see photo below). I thought if we disabled dithering, it would eliminate this shimmering effect which we can only see using a cell phone camera?

              After running ditherig

                I thought if we disable dithering, when we took a photo of the screen using a cell phone, it would look like this:

                HTC One M9+ screen

                The photo above (CNN website) is from my current cell phone (HTC One M9+ Supreme Camera Edition), which shows nice and clean image, no shimmering and no checked pattern.

                Both photos, the desktop with dithering menu and the CNN website were taken using the same cell phone (my old HTC One Max).

                So shouldn't disabling dithering would eliminate the shimmering / checked pattern on the screen? I thought that is one of our prime suspect for the cause of eye strain?

                • JTL replied to this.

                  AMD64 doesn't mean you need an AMD processor. It just means the generic x64 command set.

                  3 months later

                  Hi guys, just wanted to report back in and let people know that the combination of Dell XPS 9550 and Ditherig.exe is still working for me. I rarely get migraines any more and I feel much happier in general without having permanent headaches and nausea. If you're sensitive to temporal dithering then this is a real solution which has worked for me for 8 months now, tried and tested. Good luck everyone!

                    si_edgey Good to hear. Dell XPS is a great laptop.

                    Over time I still find the CPU in my Macbook adequate, but it's missing things such as Thunderbolt 3 and uses a proprietary SSD connector, which means I can't upgrade the storage beyond 512GB. Not to mention the GPU is a joke.

                    Alas I am doing extremely well with recent medical treatment. Will write about that soon.

                    • Gurm replied to this.
                        22 days later

                        What operating system are you running with this setup? Windows 7 has only very limited support on this machine. I am going to be installing Windows 10 2015 LTSB so that it doesn't get "anniversary update". What are you running? Also, my 9550 is nowhere near as good on my eyes as my boss's. Same screen, in theory, although I need to verify that using the panel query tool.

                        JTL Actually I recently set up a 2012-vintage Core i7 Macbook Pro. It's MUCH better on my eyes than any recent Macbook. But, like you - the CPU is better than nothing, but pretty lame compared for 5th or 6th gen i7's. And the GPU is an Intel 4000. Bleh.

                        • JTL replied to this.
                            a month later

                            Hey guys, little update for you. Things were going swimmingly with the XPS 15 9550 and so I thought that I'd upgrade to the most powerful machine I could get to last the longest amount of time before I need to upgrade again. Mistake. I sold my 9550 and bought the 9560 - had it for less than a week now and my searing migraines, eye strain and headaches are back with a vengeance.

                            I'm working on trying to find a solution - so far I'm not convinced it's the Intel drivers that are causing the problem here, I think the dithering may in fact be coming from the GTX 1050 (old laptop was GTX 960) and I feel that when I disable the 1050 in Device Manager the laptop becomes more usable. Only time will tell with this however as once my headaches and migraines have been triggered it takes a while for my head to go back to normal sadly.

                            I should really have just stuck with the 9550 but it was too tempting to upgrade to the latest and greatest to get the longest possible life out of a working machine. Couple of questions:

                            • have we ever actually discovered how to disable temporal dithering for Nvidia cards in Windows? I know it's disabled by default on most but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be enabled on the 10xx series.

                            • can anyone else verify this same situation has happened to them? I know everyone has slightly different issues but mine is very much a sensitivity to temporal dithering (and a little just to bright light itself).

                            Any help or thoughts would be great, can't believe I'm back to square one again!

                            Thanks,

                            Simon

                            • JTL replied to this.

                              si_edgey have we ever actually discovered how to disable temporal dithering for Nvidia cards in Windows? I know it's disabled by default on most but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might be enabled on the 10xx series.

                              No, we don't know how.

                              si_edgey can anyone else verify this same situation has happened to them? I know everyone has slightly different issues but mine is very much a sensitivity to temporal dithering (and a little just to bright light itself).

                              Some people on Linux have disabled dithering as nVidia makes it an option on Linux.

                              I wish you sold it after verifiying the new machine worked for you. That's what I would have done.

                                  dev