Nvidia Dithering

reaganry

yup, my software is called nvidia-settings on linux

(I bought the airtop without a hard-drive, no software came with it )
I doubt the linux version has more options but here's what I see

Slacor I have Windows 7 on my desktop as well and the linux nvidia settings do indeed have more options.

Well it depends on which options.

reaganry

After using some search engines, the most relevant ones was from... this forum! lol
https://ledstrain.org/d/80-temporal-dithering-workarounds-for-windows
https://ledstrain.org/d/31-on-windows-7-eye-strain-is-gone-and-test-the-ditherig-exe (un-tested file suggested!)

But it appears to be for ATI and assumes the dithering is disabled by default for nvidia which (at least for linux) only is enabled under certain circumstances.

Looking at some comments on this thread. If nothing works... get linux

Hi

I was wondering if you could tell me a way to disable dithering by nvidia graphics cards in Windows OS.

Phil January 5, 2015 at 11:00 am - Reply

We have only once ever had to disable dithering under Windows (I understood it was only Apple that liked it as their Cinema Display monitors were 8-bit for the longest time). Anyhow – looking at some old notes I made (and I don’t have an nVidia-equipped PC to confirm, sorry); search the registry for the 2D driver settings;

2D driver

Inside the registry location, create a DWORD value called DP_DisableDither and set it to 1

Let us know how you get on; in Linux it’s all in “/etc/X11/xorg.conf” and add the lines in Bold:
…
Section “Screen”
Identifier …
Device …
…
Option “Dac8Bit” “False”
Option “RegistryDwords” “DitherAlgo8=3; DitherAlgo6=3”

And in Radeon cards it’s controlled from the Catalyst Control Centre.

Phil.
…
EndSection

Slacor Could you please provide detailed information on the linux distribution you are using? I made a live usb stick for "Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon (64-bit)". In the live version (I am typing in it right now), I installed "nvidia-settings" downloaded from this website "https://community.linuxmint.com/software/view/nvidia-settings#". But this software does not give me the interactive window you have. it is much simpler in my computer as you can see from the two pictures below. There are no options to disable dithering. Thanks!

JTL I completely new to Linux. Let me try.

Hi JTL, I was just trying to explore different approaches to make screenshots in linux mint. All of sudden, firefox give me this error message whenever I open a new tab or start a new browser window: "Bad news first: This tab has crashed". Not sure if i will be able to fix that.

Not that it may help for Live distros - I'm just adding the current "xorg.conf" way of disabling dithering for NVIDIA cards:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Nvidia Graphics"
Option "FlatPanelProperties" "Dithering=Disabled"
EndSection

Source: ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/375.26/README/xconfigoptions.html

I have no xorg.conf and add my options in a custom file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-nvidia.conf. Not sure if all distributions can read those files. It works for Arch Linux.
But for testing the NVIDIA tool is probably better, for it can switch dithering on and off on the fly.

By the way, slightly off-topic but I'm currently testing another Option, "ForceFullCompositionPipeline" "true". Due to the shallow documentation I'm not sure how exactly it works and if it acts as a full compositor, but similarly it seems to prevent tearing everywhere. Which is also some kind of flicker.

And on Reddit someone said he had eye strain which got fixed just by using "compton" (a compositor):
https://www.reddit.com/r/i3wm/comments/4x3seb/eye_strain_with_i3_seems_solved_with_a_compositor/

Edit: I just combined the option ForceFullCompositionPipeline with compton, which works. Compton additionally reduces some clutter when moving windows over WebKit browsers. What's going on in this chain remains a mystery: Program's drawings and accelerations -> X Server -> Driver -> Driver Options -> GL/X Render -> some screen buffers -> even more buffers (compton, "CompositionPipeline") -> graphic card's final output, including unknown forced video mode optimizations -> Monitor -> Monitor's dithering/whatever ...

Jerry Are you sure your Mint runs with NVIDIA drivers? Because normally distros don't have official NVIDIA drivers enabled. Instead, they use an open source driver called "nouveau". It is totally different and has other options to control dithering. I once was told by a nouveau dev that nouveau does not enable dithering by default - only on laptop LCDs.
One can disable it with xrandr. I'll try to find the needed options and then edit my post.

Edit: https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/Dithering/

Could you please provide detailed information on the linux distribution you are using?

I am currently using Linux Mint 18.1 Cinnamon (64-bit)

JTL You need to make bigger screenshots that are readable.

Jerry I was just wondering does the forum somehow reduce the size of pictures in any way after the pictures are uploaded?

That was my fault, it does not do resizing any more.

Getting nvidia drivers to load is a bit of a PITA in linux. In fact, if nouveau is enabled in the kernel, nvidia drivers won't load! You have to disable the nouveau driver by the boot manager (grub) with nvidia drivers installed.
It's strange your terminal isn't opening.. There is a tool called inxi that can show what drivers are enabled.
For example,

$ inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA GM107 [GeForce GTX 750 Ti]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.3 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce GTX 750 Ti/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 375.26

For disabling the driver, you need to place the below in your /etc/default/grub file and run update-grub (and update-initramfs -k all -c after for good measure)

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nouveau.blacklist=1"

Unfortunately, this all doesn't work very well on a live boot since to load graphics drivers, you need to reboot and rebooting erases changes on a live boot!

KM I'm just adding the current "xorg.conf" way of disabling dithering for NVIDIA cards:

That is interesting.