And does anyone actually know if Windows 10 is doing dithering of it's own or something else? I remember back around circa fall 2015 running Windows 10 (1507) on this laptop getting strain with Chrome and I didn't know why, it was the blurry font rendering caused by DirectWrite. This is also why I want to get a lossless video capture card, capture some empirical data.

    JTL The original Windows 10 had some font scaling issues, certain kinds of windows looked really bad and it was almost like viewing it through a dirty lens. But otherwise its output is ok. The anniversary update introduced some kind of god-knows-what in the composition layer, so I stick with LTSB 2015, but that font rendering issue was quickly patched out.

        Gurm I've had no luck getting that iso. It was floating around in 2015 in unofficial channels, which dried up. Then someone made a guide to convert a regular iso to LTSB 2015 using .svf and smartversion, but now the links to those .svf are dead now too. Truly a very rare iso. Looks like 8.1 will remain as the last usable version of Windows.

        • KM replied to this.

            degen
            Official ISO (MSN subscriber download):
            en_windows_10_enterprise_2015_ltsb_x64_dvd_6848446.iso
            md5sum: da938d65c548738900810181a78203f8
            sha1sum: 264d48c902e6b586a1ed965062f7da4d4da99b35

                Thank you sir. i appreciate it!

                JTL yeah, each browser does its own rendering tricks that can be called or not by the site

                  reaganry That's LTSB 2016. I'm not sure if it's usable. But the known good version is LTSB 2015. You might want to search for the original file name and see what comes up.

                    make sure to use a program like winhasher to check that the values match what was posted earlier

                    also, for a product that was supposed to be eol like 6 months ago it sure has a lot of recent security updates being pushed by wu

                    i feel really positive about this

                    edit: I was looking at the wrong product. Security updates until 2025 for Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB!!!

                    this forum is the greatest. i'd love to give back more!

                    I found a couple of explanation of the power settings in Nvidia control panel. While I don't know if it's correct it is interesting. The setting is defaulted to Optimal Power. Looks like the settings has an impact on when and if we are rendering frames outside of games, but I don't know if that's significant for us.

                    From https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/4trvuk/power_management_modes_difference/

                    It might be a little different for mobile GPUs, so I can't comment on all the power modules.

                    However, for desktop GPUs (at least my 970 with latest driver) there are 3 power options, optimal power, adaptive and prefer maximum performance.

                    Prefer max performance: Locks the GPU into a higher voltage and higher clock state, your GPU will stay at its '3D application/game' clocks in all situations and not lower itself into an idle state

                    Adaptive: The GPU will reduce clock speeds and voltages when it isn't under heavy load, i.e. when browsing the web/watching a video

                    Optimal Power: Basically everything adaptive does, however if your GPU is doing nothing (i.e. on the desktop) Optimal power won't keep re-rendering the frame over and over, if it's the same frame it'll just pull it from memory and display that frame

                    From https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/4x15ax/optimal_power_adaptive_or_highest_performance/:

                    Optimal Power
                    Maximum power saving. It effectively stops the GPU from rendering anything in idle if the desktop isn't changing. Moving your cursor around for instance will trigger a render. Other than that, it's the same as Adaptive.

                    Adaptive
                    Lowers the clock of the GPU and memory when idle and in games (when usage is low). It's basically the same as Intel's Speedstep and AMD's Cool'n'Quiet.

                    Maximum Performance
                    Clocks will not be lowered when in games, this will of course increase power consumption and heat. It will lower in idle, however if you launch Google Chrome for instance, the GPU will run at maximum clocks while it's open.

                    Generally, I recommend Adaptive. For some games you have to specifically tell it to run full throttle in order to avoid stuttering.

                    6 days later

                    Gurm The Zotac literature says they use some kind of "4k on a 1080 display" technology

                    It's NVidia DSR, which renders the game at a higher resolution (4k) and downscales it, similar to how you can play a 4k video on a 1080p display and it looks sharper.

                    https://www.geforce.com/hardware/technology/dsr/technology

                    I've never used it (I rarely game) but I can't imagine this post processing incurred by such technology does anything good in terms of eye strain or even input latency.

                      a year later

                      Hey,

                      I'll try out a system with MSI Z97 Board, Intel I5 Haswell and with a MSI GTX 970. OS is Win 10.

                      The system gives me a bit eyestrain at the beginning, however I'll do more tests to check the GTX 970 for me. Although the system is old, it's the most powerful I have so far.

                      Hey some Bios Data:

                      VBios: 84.04.36.00.F1
                      Mainboard Bios: E7917IMS V1.3

                      would this information helpful vor the Nvidia experts here?

                      8 days later

                      Sorry for the Tripple Post.

                      My Setup with the GTX 970 definitely gives me eyestrain. However not as bad as Intel devices.

                      13 days later

                      I bought a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970, the same model used by AgentX20, and thankfully I can use it without eye strain. Thanks man. I can now retire my GTX 760...actually I think i will keep it as spare. Graphics cards that doesnt cause eye strain is rare, so I think i will just keep this.

                        For those of you who have a good 970 what hardware and OS are you using? The more detail the better. Anyone using it on Linux?

                        dev