DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

I'm bewildered how what appears to me as two different LCD panels can "exist" within one laptop and how much JUST software can completely change perceived display quality.

Congratulations, it looks like you have found your GOOD configuration 🙂

If you write down your GOOD configuration briefly:
1) Windows 10 22H2(19045.3570)
2) Intel UHD Graphics 615 (6xx most likely too)
3) OLD video driver 24.20.100.6222 (https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=24.20.100.6222)
4) ditherig.exe (version??) with "disable all dithering" (https://kawamoto.no-ip.org/henteko/myapp_en.html)
5) internal MacBook Air LCD panel
is everything right?

do you see the difference on the test sample "gradient/banding" ? http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php
macOS vs Windows 10 22H2

could you check your configuration with this driver from 2016?
https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=21.20.16.4475
but only if you have an full image of your good system, to ensure that changes can be rolled back

    glvn

    Here is my full, working and strain-free system specs…

    ✅ = the minimum needed for a working setup.

    General:

    • ✅ MacBook Air (Retina, 13-inch, 2018)

      • Intel i5-8210Y @ 1.60GHz
      • 16GB RAM
      • 512GB SSD
      • ✅ Original unreplaced screen (unsure of panel supplier)
      • recoveryOS says “Install macOS Ventura” regardless of installed OS
    • ✅ Windows 10 Pro 22H2 (19045.3570) with Feature Experience Pack 1000.19052.1000.0

      • (Windows is necessary, all macOS versions look terrible on this machine)

      • Installed via Mojave 10.14.6 on macOS partition

      • ✅ Screen resolution 2560x1600 with 200% scaling (HiDPI)

      • Default ClearType font rendering settings

      • Light mode

      • “Better performance” (option 3 of 4) power plan selected in both battery and plugged in

      • Battery saver disabled

      • Brightness 50% or higher works for me (76%+ eliminates PWM entirely)

      • ✅ Auto brightness disabled

      • ✅ NO Night Light

      • Custom accent color #00cfff (I find this more pleasing than any of the default accent color choices)

      • Enhance pointer precision off (not necessary but improves trackpad)

      • Mouse pointer shadow disabled

      • Text cursor blinking disabled

    Software:

    • WSL is installed (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS)

    • ✅ Firefox 122.0.1 (HW acceleration disabled, not sure if necessary)

    • VS Code 1.85.2 (Electron 25.9.7)

    • NoMachine 8.11.3 to screenshare into second Mac when needed

      • Display post-processing and hardware decoding both disabled

      • Renders at pixel-doubled “non-retina” resolution

    • The only app I've found to still have visible temporal dithering and cause strain, even within this entire configuration, is Figma Desktop — it seems to implement its own dithering algorithm due to its "enhanced" color management capabilities, because every other Electron app does not cause strain for me. Thankfully, Figma is able to be used strain-free via the web version in Firefox.

    Apple Software Update (Windows):

    • Enhanced Precision Trackpad driver installed

    • ❌ Do NOT install Studio Display support driver (this will update Intel graphics!)

    GPU:

    • Intel UHD Graphics 617 (Amber Lake)

    • Device Revision 02 with Video BIOS 1001.0

    • ✅ Driver 24.20.100.6222 (7/10/2018) from Mojave Boot Camp (most important piece, DON'T UPDATE!)

    • ✅ “Intel(R) Graphics Settings” should appear instead of “Command Center”

    • Intel » Display » Color Settings

      • Color Enhancement

      • ✅ Brightness 0, Contrast 50, Hue 0, Saturation 0

    • Intel » Video

      • Color Enhancement

      • Standard color correction: app default

      • Input range: app default

      • Total color correction: disabled

      • Image Enhancement

      • Sharpness: app default

      • Skin tone enhancement: disabled

      • Noise reduction: custom, 0

      • Contrast enhancement: disabled

      • Film mode detection: disabled

    • Intel » 3D

      • Application Settings

      • CMAA: turn off

      • MSAA: app default

      • Anisotropic filtering: app default

      • Vertical sync: app default

      • Global Settings

      • Application optimal mode: enable

    • Intel » Power

      • ✅ Display Power Saving Technology disabled for ALL combinations of power states and plans

    Disable Color Management:

    • Settings » System » Display » Windows HD Color

      • ✅ Turn off “Stream HDR video"
    • Task Scheduler » Microsoft » Windows » WindowsColorSystem

      • ✅ Disable “Calibration Loader” task and all triggers (access the triggers within the task through double-click)

    • Control Panel » Display Adapter Properties » Color Management

      • ✅ No profiles associated with device in Devices tab

      • ✅ “Use Windows display calibration” should be unchecked and grayed out in Advanced tab

    Winaero Tweaker:

    • Behavior

      • ✅ Disable Windows Update: ON
    • Boot and Logon

      • ✅ Disable blur on sign-in screen: ON

    • Desktop and Taskbar

      • ✅ Increase taskbar transparency level: ON (disables Acrylic systemwide)

      • Wallpaper quality: 100

    Ditherig.exe:

    • ✅ Ver 2.1

    • ✅ “Disable all dithering functions” selected (the final piece!)

    What you should notice if this works:

    ㅤ 1. Display suddenly looks beautiful and crisp instead of hazy and “dry”

    ㅤ 2. Solid colors are uniform, clean, and still — not shimmery, grainy, and "constantly moving"

    ㅤ 3. Setting apps to light mode doesn’t feel blinding

    ㅤ 4. Text feels “on the background”, not “in front”, no shimmer, minimal glow/halo

    ㅤ 5. Small, precise pixel-level details in icons and UI are crisp and obvious

    ㅤ 6. Shadow and blur effects in Firefox and Electron apps have heavy banding, and adjusting brightness or contrast in Intel Graphics Settings affects this banding

    ㅤ 7. You begin to notice certain visual details that you have not experienced in this vivid of a way since the 2000s

    ㅤ 8.

    ???. Welcome home !!   ꩜🐚🐚🐚❓❓❓

      If you have a friend with a newer iPhone (13 pro or later) can you record a macro/slo-mo of the screen using both drivers? It would need a phone with the macro lens and 240hz slo-mo to see it.

      I'm wondering if the new driver is using spatial or temporal dither (or maybe both). It would be really useful to know what it is doing.

      We tried to do this on a MBP 16" and mostly didn't find anything. In this case, I bet whatever the Intel driver is doing will be visible.

        mherf I have a 14 Pro, slow motion at 240hz nothing detected either with good drivers, or when I recorded before when I had bad drivers on Windows for a bit. This is probably because of the high pixel density, I can't get macro mode to focus clearly at that density and any dithering is probably obscured by the iPhone's typical video camera grain.

        Usually I can only successfully record whether an OS is temporal dithering when it's on a "non-retina" display like my old CCFL TN monitor, because the pixels are big enough that camera grain doesn't interfere with them. Not connecting this working setup to any monitors at this point though.

        All I know is that this Windows configuration (old drivers, ditherig.exe open) causes me to very obviously feel and see that text and background colors are not moving anymore, this is definitely not a placebo because it's remained so shockingly better for like one and a half weeks now, and is one of the only setups I own where I don't see colors shimmering at all even if I stare at a solid background for a minute.

        But if I boot back into macOS (and from what I remember of using Windows with newer drivers) everything is constantly shimmering again. macOS still seems to dither on this Mac even in Safe Mode.

        DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

        Intel UHD Graphics 617

        21.20.16.4475 driver version is NOT suitable for this chip (UHD617)

        But it is suitable for integrated graphics of Intel desktop processors 6xxx 7xxx
        the configuration is already outdated, but not so rare. It would be interesting to see the results of combining 22h2 + UHD5xx/6xx graphics + this OLD driver version + dithering.exe + external monitor.

        25 days later

        DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs Of course, the current 2022 Intel Windows driver also has forced color management and temporal dithering too, even with ditherig.exe.

        This could be an interesting research point if this could be validated with a lossless capture card.

          ryans However, what the older and newer drivers change for internal laptop displays might not be the same as capture card output, so not sure if this would be as useful compared to e.g. recording the internal display through a microscope.

          For example, I have a 2012 Windows laptop that seems to not ever use dithering at all on its HDMI output regardless of any settings, but uses temporal dithering on the internal screen by default which can be disabled via ditherig. It renders to internal and external displays differently.

          a month later

          ryans Nope, I now use:

          • M1 Air [Ventura 13.6.6] with Stillcolor app (see my latest post in the Stillcolor thread. WAY better than 2018 Air and one of the only usable Apple Silicon Macs after I tried as many as I could! And the ONLY one that truly looks like a "good Intel" in regards to lower color "intensity" and contrast!)

          • 2012 Lenovo Yoga 13 [Win8.1] with ditherig.exe as my "always reliably comfortable all the time" machine, mostly used to screen share into Macs (ended up being much more comfortable than 2018 Air)

          • 2015 12" MacBook [Mojave 10.14.6] with nvram boot-args="dither=0" (which actually works on this model) as my "reliable and usable old Intel Mac" and "second screen" type device for referencing websites and notes or watching videos "on the side" on my desk.

          2018 Air is currently sitting dormant because I wiped Windows to load a full-size Sonoma backup of my 14" mini-LED on it (to more easily retain access to my old data and app settings) since I sold/no longer have my 14"!

          I will probably put Windows back on the 2018 Air later though, as it was a decent and generally usable way to use modern Windows apps when I need to. Maybe I'll try an older version like 2004 or 1809 next time to see if it can make things better (because in the end, I still noticed some pretty slight temporal dithering on background colors on the 2018 even with old Intel drivers. Not terrible at all compared to the "absolutely unusable level of dithering" seen while booted into macOS, but not "totally" still either.)

          Unfortunately I can't edit titles on this forum (such as this post's title), even though I'm able to edit contents.

          • JTL replied to this.
            JTL changed the title to MacBook Air 2018 + Win 10 22H2 + OLD Intel drivers = much more usable than macOS .

            Would be interesting to record some similar stuff in win and mac here if you do to try to deconstruct exactly what is different. It's time consuming as always tho.

            • Refresh rate / VRR
            • Different monitor timings / blanking
            • Different default gamma?
            • Copy color profile and timings from Windows to Mac?
            • Effect of turning off retina and scaling on both and running them at native resolution?
            • Recording of scrolling text https://www.testufo.com/framerates-text
            • How much does the same browser differ? Is the issue everything else on the OS?

              async Copy color profile and timings from Windows to Mac?

              Windows 10 on 2018 Air is using no color profile at all at least to my knowledge, I even disabled the "Calibration Loader" service to prevent Windows from doing that thing where it "slightly changes colors right after typing in your password" on a fresh boot.

              That's something that can't really be reproduced on macOS (since there's no way to truly use "no color profile" on macOS, the closest you can get is a "NULL ICC Profile" but that doesn't actually disable color management)

              I'll check timings the next time I reinstall Windows on the 2018 Air. That will not be for a while, though, because I'm busy at the moment and I have other usable devices — so I currently don't have a reason to use my 2018 Air.

              dev