Windows 10 Anniversary Edition
- Edited
I've been playing around with disabling desktop composition in Windows 7 to see if it affects my eyestrain at all (it is forced to always on in Windows 8 and higher), and one thing I noticed was that with it disabled scrolling in any browser and especially with smooth scrolling enabled becomes an absolute disaster with horizontal lines, screen shaking and jittery.
Despite reading I still fundamentally do not understand what a window manager or desktop composition is or how it could have these effects.
degen A window manager just manages to draw windows around programs (with borders and minimize/maximize/close buttons etc.). In OS's like Linux you have many choices.
A compositor pushes itself between programs and the final(?) screen output. It lets programs write to a buffer in the background and presents the final output on its own. Typically it's 3D accelerated but also no acceleration is possible (as you said not really under Windows 8+).
I have always noticed with my very old ATI cards (like Radeon X2300) that disabling Windows 7's 3D composition disables eye strain. And even further back in time, when there was no 3D desktop (Windows XP), the eye strain kicked in as soon as I changed my 3dfx Voodoo 3's brightness via the graphics driver tab or whenever I set the screen to rotate by 90 degrees (for monitor's pivot mode). All those modes must have something in common.
KM My suspicion is that the compositor is doing video-framebuffer-accelerated hijinks. In Anniversary Edition they changed the compositor to prepare hardware vendors for the changes in Creator's Update, which allowed hardware vendors to insert things like overlays and highlights and filters into the composition layer directly... so I suspect the compositor is using some flickery stupid painful mode now, instead of the nice stable framebuffer that was present in 2015 editions.
Grrr.. I was upgraded at work today to a new laptop since I had mine for 3+ years. They gave me a Thinkpad T480. I am not celebrating. Once again (unbelievable) it's a 1366x768 screen (dull and lifeless to boot). Before they gave me the laptop I asked what build they were going to put on, they said LTSB 2015. So I was happy to hear that, also thinking I'd get the 1980x1024 version. They gave me LTSB 2016 instead. Other than the fact I hate the Windows 10 interface because I seem to have to hunt for everything (and the font rendering in all sorts of windows is a bit inconsistent which helps cement my opinion that Aero was the last properly done UI from MS.), it is not comfortable for me. I'm in the Power User group, so I am going to try and update to the latest video driver from Lenovo, but I doubt that this is going to resolve anything. So I will likely have to ask tomorrow if I can have my old HP with the HD 4000 on Windows 7 back or if they can wipe the T480 and put 2015 on it instead.
As a side complaint, the only video output port on the T480 is HDMI. Lenovo removed displayport too now. Trash.
Postscript: I've asked for different remedies today so I'll see what they say. In the short term, I have observed that the Thinkpad usb dock (shaped like a box, not a snap-in base) contains a displayport. Using that displayport output the video was subtly a little better than the hdmi output which doesn't really surprise me. The vga output on the box is terrible though.
The good news is that I'm pretty sure MS is aware of the issue - the latest versions of Windows 10 seem MUCH better than Anniversary edition. Not as good as 2015 releases, but getting there.
I'm not convinced they REALLY know, but people have complained about eyestrain and they are making changes to the compositing layer. I can tell you that booting up to "Anniversary Edition" immediately made my eyes hurt, but booting up to the latest version (the one where Cortana talks to you through the entire install) has a much slower onset of symptoms.
Does anyone tried the October update? April was unusable for me, and I am not sure about downgrade to 2017 version from October update.
I saw one of major changes is better HDR, I’d guess it won’t be a move in „our” direction, however dark themes may be a nice addition.
Update, the tech didn't write back to me again, but I didn't really expect him to either. He's an outsource.
The good news is, I don't mind that much. I still hate Windows 10, its ugly interface, and all its inconsistencies, BUT, I am able to use LTSB 2016 using the usb box that has a displayport on it on the desk monitor. After having changed the color temperature to 4200K to match the ceiling lights close enough, and turned off as much of the stupid font anti-aliasing as I could. So I guess I got used to it which is good news because it means there is no immediate emergency.
My home pc has both a hdmi and displayport out, and I use the displayport one, because like the work laptop, I find the displayport output to be subtly more stable in some manner.
But holy, W10 is so janky. I'm forever fighting with the thing to set the % scaling, etc. and rebooting or whatever so that apps stop rendering with blurry text. In a bunch (esp. internet explorer) I can end up with cleartype anti-aliasing, greyscale anti-aliasing and no anti-aliasing all on the same page. Yes. All 3, totally serious. Incroyable.
The whole "display port seems better for me" is interesting. It seems people prefer a specific port for some reason I've seen people complain about DP/HDMI/DVI causing eye strain while others being fine.
I don't think I've seen a difference for me. I've never used DP but HDMI and DVI seem pretty much equivelant of each other on a "comfy" GPU but I would imagine it's definitely possible for one to be better than the other either for you or just for an individual card.
I guess this means we should always try all ports before assuming a GPU is "bad" for us?
Generally my connection now goes GPU > DVI to HDMI converter > 10m HDMI cable >HDMI to DVI CONVERTER to monitor so I'm really using DVI at this point. This seems to be fine for me with "good" GPUs
(10m cable because I like my computer in a different room for maximum silence and I use an HDMI cable because of the smaller connector making the hole much smaller. If you want a silent computer this is the way to do it. Nothing is loud when it's completely out of earshot)
Soreeyes Just so you know, you don't actually have converters, but adapters. The video signal with DVI and HDMI are the exact same, use the same signalling protocol, etc. The only difference with HDMI is that it has a pin for audio and DVI doesn't carry audio. Where the video portion is concerned, all you have are extra bits attached that don't do anything. It'll be exactly the same as with a single DVI cable.