glvn Thank you for your response. It took me some time to gather information on devices used.

1) what model of video card and monitor are you using for testing?

In the case of Ditherig + Intel these laptops were used: Dell Latitude E6520, Thinkpad E440, Dynabook Satellite Pro C50-G-113 (all of them posses TN panel, which I also used for testing). Upon enabling Ditherig I could see the effect immediately. I made a picture on how Ditherig works for me with Intel GPU - in the left part Ditherig is not running and in the right part Ditherig is on (banding visible):

With AMD I tried HP 255 G5 laptop with its panel and Viewsonic VA2223-H connected through HDMI or VGA and R.ID drivers and SetupCLI.exe to disable dithering.

I also tried Ditherig with Ryzen 5600G + Dell 2009W.

In both AMD cases I couldn't see a difference.

2) dithering settings made in this way (via the registry) will take effect only after reboot

I tried rebooting both AMD machines and I still didn't see any difference (I expected the same behaviour like with Intel GPUs)..

3) are you using the same monitor for intel graphics and amd graphics?

No, I didn't (most of the devices mentioned don't belong to me; I'm testing whatever is possible to find a new display that would suit my eyes). However, Viewsonic display is mine and I still have Thinkpad with me so I will try and let you know if there is any difference with Ditherig.

  • glvn replied to this.

    glvn Oh, thank you for explaining. Then these R.ID drivers probably have no special effect compared to official ones when it is like this. On the other hand, as snimat mentioned, SetupCLI.exe is for a custom driver. I could check registry and see what effect this setting has.

    snimat

    Philips 346B1C

    https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/ef821b52
    the panel in this monitor is true 8-bit (not 6bit+frc)

    in my case:
    1) using an true 8-bit panel(Philips 243v DVI) in combination with Intel HD630 + dithering.exe does not give banding on the sample http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php if temporal dithering disabled,
    but it starts to flicker a little in general if temporal dithering enable
    2) using not true 8-bit panel (6bit+frc HP 27es HDMI) in combination with ATI/AMD HD4850 + reg tweak "HDMI_DisableDither"=dword:00000001 give banding on the sample
    "HDMI_DisableDither"=dword:00000000 not give banding on the sample(after restart), but it seems to add fatigue to the eyes

    My next dumb guess is this: perhaps eye fatigue appears from a combination of TWO independent phenomena:
    A) dithering of the monitor panel itself (in the case of 6bit+frc)
    B) dithering the output signal of the video card

    bqqq3rcv

    In the case of Ditherig + Intel these laptops

    in the case of a laptop, it is impossible to unambiguously determine the model of the LCD panel based on the laptop model 🙁 AIDA64??

    Upon enabling Ditherig I could see the effect immediately.

    This is true, dithering.exe works through PCI control registers and its action occurs immediately. unlike discrete AMD drivers, which are controlled(controlled??) by values in the registry and changes require re-reading these values (reboot is an option)
    Viewsonic VA2223-H have 6bit+frc panel https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/model/adb31ce7

    for ati/amd gpu there are currently two known ways to control dithering:
    1) a key value in the windows registry (works on hd4850 + win7) and not the fact that it works with modern drivers
    (this method is used in SetupCLI.exe and RadeoMod)
    2) dithering.exe of the latest version which should work with AMD GPUs(through PCI control registers??), but not with discrete AMD video cards, as I understand this situation
    sorry for my terrible english 🙁

      glvn It took me some time to gather the data requested (I save reports using hwinfo since it's lightweight and free). Here it comes:

      Dynabook N156BGA-EA3; HP 255 G5 BOE06A5; E6520 LTN56HT01; Lenovo E440 LP140WH8-TPD1

      I wonder what you can do with those data :-).

      Unfortunately, you are true about the Viewsonic.

      I agree with you on information about dithering control (I also tested how setupcli.exe works; you can forget the alternative drivers for now). Don't worry about grammar; I think that most of the users here are not native speakers. For example, I am from the EU :-).

      • glvn replied to this.

        snimat Best effort I had so far was changing the Color Depth to 12 bpc and the Pixel format to YCbCr 4:2:0

        Please, can you tell me how you did that?

          bqqq3rcv

          Sure, I was using it with my LG IPS225V and the Feintech VMS04201 Matrix switch in-between. The VMS04201 has the feature of EDID spoofing, which tells the device that the display has some specific capabilities which might not match with the display. From the manual:

          STD: The HDMI source is signaled that the HDMI sinks support 4K60Hz HDR and 5.1 sound. If your output devices do not support such format you may experience no sound or no signal.

          For some reason (and later unreproducible) I was able to choose the color profile. Like I said I chose 12 bps and YCbCR 4:2:0 which looked good. Here is a picture from the sky of Euro Truck Simulator 2. I had no issues for that play session:

          Maybe just maybe it is an option to actively spoof the EDID and set up an environment where the graphics card resorts to some fall back mode for old displays. I don't know your situation but every hack will be fragile. Any update, to Windows, to your graphics card, might break what you achieved and you are back to square one. Like I said above, I will return any device in the future, which strains my sight. My eyes are only recovering after three days of starring at bad graphics for debugging.

            snimat My eyes are only recovering after three days of starring at bad graphics for debugging.

            Tell me ;-); I need a newer laptop that will replace my beloved dell latitude d620 (that is becoming slow and I'm worried about the lifetime of ccfl backlight too) so I tried a few laptops lately and recovering takes some time with me too.

            I like your idea of using proxy device between your computer and display. I'm starting to think that EDID spoofing might be a way to go (I also considered lowering colour bit depth in OS but there are not many OSe's that would support it). I also don't know how to change color profile (e.g. to YCbCR 4:2:0).

            The worst thing is that this is now affecting me with previously harmless devices, like my PS5, PS Portal or Xbox Series. It is definitely better when not using devices, before that my vision was "slow" all the time. No it is snappy as always, but still the slight burning when using devices (at night).

            I also think it might be related with the content I consumed. I played mostly RTS and simulators, that had me glued to the display. I wonder if anyone has a clear and scientifically proven measure what is producing eye strain and what not. So far I only read about personal opinions, sometimes conflicting.

              bqqq3rcv

              Dynabook N156BGA-EA3; HP 255 G5 BOE06A5; E6520 LTN56HT01; Lenovo E440 LP140WH8-TPD1
              I wonder what you can do with those data :-).

              https://www.panelook.com/modelsearch.php?keyword=N156BGA-EA3
              https://www.panelook.com/PT156WHM-N10__15.6__overview_42420.html
              LTN56HT01 ??
              https://www.panelook.com/modelsearch.php?keyword=LP140WH8-TPD1
              at first glance, all these panels are 6bit
              26 x 26 x 26=262144 (262K colors)
              at a minimum, this means that such panels are not capable of displaying 8-bit color without tricks like dithering 🙁
              and we return again to the questions: does dither affect strain? how to disable dithering guaranteed? What samples can be used to verify that dithering is disabled?

              I continued my experiment at Windows 7 Classic :
              (6bit+frc HP 27es HDMI) in combination with ATI HD4850 + reg tweak "HDMI_DisableDither"=dword:00000001 give banding on the sample http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php
              (6bit+frc HP 27es DVI) in combination with ATI HD4850 + reg tweak "TMDS_DisableDither"=dword:00000001 NOT give banding on the sample 🙁 WTF ?

              bqqq3rcv

              in the right part Ditherig is on (banding visible):

              By "Dithering is on" you mean:
              dithering.exe launched with the "temporal" option is selected ?
              or Dithering.exe launched with the "disable all dithering function" option is selected ?
              Do you feel a difference in eye strain?

                glvn

                glvn or Dithering.exe launched with the "disable all dithering function" option is selected ?

                Yes.

                glvn Do you feel a difference in eye strain?

                I think it is better with ditherig on than without it (but only when using intel iGPUs). I still struggle to find out exactly what my is main problem causing eyestrain. I very much appreciate your ideas about panels and their properties in this respect. I also tried intel igpu+6bit-frc external display over hdmi and I find out that when ditherig is on (all dithering disabled) that bands when watching gradient are not so much visible as compared to laptop panels. Thank you for pointing that out.

                • glvn replied to this.

                  bqqq3rcv

                  I also tried intel igpu+6bit-frc external display over hdmi and I find out that when ditherig is on (all dithering disabled) that bands when watching gradient are not so much visible as compared to laptop panels.

                  What full model name was the external display?
                  It would be interesting to see the results of dithering.exe + igpu on a real 8-bit panel (like Gigabyte M32Q)...

                  Enabling color management (.icm color profile) also affects the smoothness of gradients - it worsens them. I have long come across an assumption that enabling the color profile automatically turns on dithering on ATI/AMD gpu drivers. In any case, it is better to check whether you are using color management, as this may further affect the smoothness of the gradients.

                    glvn What full model name was the external display?

                    The Viewsonic I mentioned earlier (besides that I have a few old CCFL displays but these are probably all 6bit)

                    glvn Enabling color management (.icm color profile) also affects the smoothness of gradients - it worsens them

                    I will try to find out how to disable colour management.

                    I also tried to override EDID (by changing info about supported bit depth) but had no success so far (i.e. it had no visible effect).

                    • glvn replied to this.

                      bqqq3rcv

                      I also tried to override EDID (by changing info about supported bit depth)

                      what software do you use to read EDID? Perhaps I misunderstand the information from the edid, but I still can’t determine the bit depth of the panel from the edid information 🙁

                        5 days later

                        glvn I used this one: https://www.deltacast.tv/products/free-software/e-edid-editor . It is necessary to use email address for download, so I used temporary email address for that. It has GUI that allows you to change values. There is an option to view changes in HEX format (in red). I used the changed value to add a key to registry (I copied the original value and edited it). There is a website from which I found out what has to be changed in registry: https://migueltek.com/tool/simple-edid-editor-for-win-11/ ;

                        So, We just need to write the modified EDID Block 0 information to "0" in the following path (0 means override EDID Base Block), value type is "REG_BINARY", length is 128 bytes.HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY\%MONITOR_INSTANCE_PATH%\Device Parameters\EDID_OVERRIDE

                          I also made a discovery about gradient picture available at lagom. It actually can be zoomed. So when I tried ryzen 5600g + 6 bit-frc CCFL panel in win10 with zoomed gradient and ditherig I could see changes to the picture across all ditherig settings. Now I can confirm it works with integrated vega gpu.

                          • glvn replied to this.

                            bqqq3rcv

                            So when I tried ryzen 5600g + 6 bit-frc CCFL panel in win10 with zoomed gradient and ditherig I could see changes to the picture across all ditherig settings.

                            Can I ask for more details about the computer configuration?

                            1. motherboard model name
                            2. monitor connection type VGA/DVI/HDMI/DP ?
                            3. windows 10 version/build
                            4. GPU driver version
                            5. ditherig.exe version (2,1 ??)
                              and the most important question: is there a difference in eye strain from different settings ditherig.exe ?
                              4 days later

                              bqqq3rcv This is big security risk installing these apps. Maybe its better if someone shares how to use database csv in this app and how to manually apply needed changes.

                                dev