ditherig.exe on Windows 11 24H2

whystrainwhy I have an Intel Arc A750 Limited Edition and I have found that on a specific 1080p monitor

Can you send gpu-z main page screenshot, (to compare vbios version etc), windows build name / driver version + specific settings used, monitor + cable used, motherboard name + bios version?

@WhisperingWind Hi, could you also share same data, to compare it with WSW ? Very interesting, whats difference between your equipments…

From your experience with Intel Arc GPUs, do you think the new B580 that everyone is talking about would make of a difference or is the architecture used in the GPU as well as the drivers basically the same as to induce dithering or other stuff?

I believe that it won't get worse, but it won't get better either.

I've basically shut off everything I can think of that would enable dithering in Windows 11, and I think ditherig kinda helps?

I think if the vendor of your graphics card changed the VBIOS and enabled dithering by default, then Ditherig should disable it. Since the format of control registers for enabling/disabling dithering has remained unchanged for a long time. It is only necessary to make ARC recognized as an Intel iGPU of the latest generations that supports Ditherig.

Maybe I can try out Linux on that specific GPU + monitor. I have yet to have any luck with Linux, but do you have a recommended distro + DE?

At the moment, only on my TV, Windows and Linux do not cause eye strain. The latest Ubuntu X11 work for me.

Hi, could you also share same data, to compare it with WSW ? Very interesting, whats difference between your equipments…

ASRock Arc A770 Phantom Gaming 16GB OC https://ibb.co/yFKrkhYX

Unnamed HDMI 2.0 cable, 3 meters.

Motherboard https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-MASTER-G2-Edition-rev-10#kf

BIOS F8 (Mar 15, 2019) https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-MASTER-G2-Edition-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

Kingston Fury 3200MHz 32 Gb DDR4 RAM (4x8Gb)

CPU 9900K

specific settings used

All graphics settings are set to default (Windows, Linux).

There is no ReBAR support in the BIOS (even in the latest BIOS version for my motherboard).

simplex

ARC can work with 9th generation CPUs without ReBar, but this leads to a drop in GPU performance. Additionally, I observe artifacts in Windows when playing videos in the browser. However, since I use Linux and don't play games, I don't have issues with this configuration.

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I have posted lots of noise here. But, just want to confirm, dithering.exe - does work on windows 11 and reduces strain for old hardware. 100 percent.

whystrainwhy All of them copy from each other and use the same industry methods, so I would not point out to anything specific. Ditherig was created for those old GPUs first, but this is a list from creator of ditherig:

This requires Intel 6th generation graphics or later (e.g. Intel HD Graphics 3000, including Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge, Haswell, Bay Trail, Broadwell, Cherry Trail, Skylake, Kaby Lake, Broxton, Coffee Lake, Gemini Lake, Amber Lake, Whiskey Lake, Ice Lake, Comet Lake, Lakefield, Jasper Lake, Rocket Lake, Alder Lake, Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake generations) or AMD GCN 5th generation graphics or later (e.g. AMD Radeon Vega 11 Graphics, including Raven Ridge, Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Rembrandt, Barcelo, Raphael, Phoenix and Hawk Point generations).
I have checked behavior with Intel Iris Xe Graphics, Intel UHD Graphics 620, Intel HD Graphics 515, Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200, Intel HD Graphics 4000, AMD Radeon Vega 8 Graphics and AMD Radeon 680M.

So I personally would go for newest one from this list, or maybe get proper gaming raphics card for stationary desktop. Those usually a bit more liberal on customizations.

Also, all in all, I would say - macbooks are not as bad as claimed. Windows 11 I think is worse than any macbook on the older machine. Newer machines, maybe it is much better, I do not know. With any of the Air line you could set Generic RGB color profile, turn of dithering with betterDisplay or stilColor app, and it will be better. It just what happens - people tend to work more and become more engaged whilst using macbooks, this is a reason why unfortunately macbooks are blaimed for so many things. I am yet to prove this, but once I will get that portable monitor which could be placed above macbook air screen, you could have good machne. Switching machines also, I realised not a good idea. I do not know why, but if I would work with macbook all day, and then switch to windows 11 laptop, I would be toasted and have severe brain fog. But if using only windows machine, I can adapt to it. Just not sure anymore is it really better. It culminates always in anxiety attack and brain for me.

And forgot to mention Ubuntu or other linux distro. These I feel work well with old hardware, i.e. it allows to turn of dithering. I even had one company who did not allow to use Windows for contractors. They said either Mac or Linux, no windows.

macsforme

pretty sure the 2015 retina has issues at the TCON / LCD panel level

(as do a lot of laptop IPS panels in general — e.g. my thinkpad T480 was unusable with 6 different IPS panels I swapped in of varying color gamuts and resolutions. even menus in the BIOS was causing strain and depth perception issues, but BIOS finally started feeling normal once I started testing TN panels instead)

the 2015 retina has a lot of anomalies, e.g. even when I attempted to simulate a fully monochrome display by filtering the entire screen green and turning off red/blue sub pixels —

there was still really strange things happening like text having blue glows around it, darker greens looking very blue tinted in general, drop shadows looking more intense than they should, and scrolling leaving very noticeable red ghosting trails. this happened in both macOS and Ubuntu

not really sure if dithering even is necessarily the main problem here, as disabling the AMD chip's dithering on macOS on the 2015 using the PsychtoolboxKernelDriver method (which also let me truncate to 6 bit with visible banding) did nothing at all to improve strain on the LCD

what the problem felt like to me seems to be something like an oversharpening effect, dynamic contrast, an effect that blurs lower-contrast colors, or some kind of really strong motion blur/overdrive happening at the panel level?

...........

Donux Do you mean tinnitus? I get tinnitus from screens too. I am thinking its from neuro inflammation or some sort of elevated intracranial pressure that screens trigger?

Earlier, I conducted research related to detecting spatial dithering in Windows 10 22H2. The application ditherig was used to control dithering. The results showed that the ditherig application works properly when used with the ARC A770 in Windows 22H2.

Today, I tested the functionality of ditherig in Windows 11 24H2. The test system was an i5-12450H (Intel UHD 48EUs iGPU).

Screenshots were taken using a Blackmagic UltraStudio Recorder 3G:

1. without using the ditherig application;
2. with ditherig installed (dithering disabled) (uploaded to another hosting service because postimg.cc replaces this file with the file from the previous numbered item due to it having the exact same checksum, as both files are pixel-by-pixel identical);
3. with ditherig installed (spatial dithering enabled).

Now let's compare the screenshots:

1. "without using the ditherig application" vs "with ditherig installed (dithering disabled)": the images are identical, pixel by pixel;
2. "with ditherig installed (dithering disabled)" vs "with ditherig installed (spatial dithering enabled)": a characteristic checkerboard pixel pattern can be seen in certain areas, similar to what I described in my post about spatial dithering in Windows 10 22H2. The red dots represent pixels that were altered by the spatial dithering algorithm when compared to the image where dithering was disabled.
3. By default, dithering is not enabled on my iGPU, so temporal dithering is also absent. However, temporal dithering can be enabled using ditherig. Analyzing the recorded video (a photo of the screen, static without movement) shows that the option to enable temporal dithering works as well. And disabling it, accordingly, works too. The video is very large (uncompressed 10-bit stream), so I didn't upload it. But if needed, I can compress and upload it. To determine temporal dithering, the method proposed by aiaf in their post was used.

It demonstrates that the ditherig application functions properly in Windows 11 24H2.

In my case, hardware dithering was completely disabled on the iGPU by default, so there’s no need for me to use the ditherig application. However, your situation might differ; it’s also possible that on some configurations, ditherig may not work correctly. But at least on both of my PCs (ARC A770 and Intel UHD 48EUs), it performed as expected.

simplex

Have you tried same with arc750?

Here I tested the ASRock ARC A770 on Windows 10 22H2. The behavior is identical to that of Intel UHD 48EUs.

Btw, if arc750 and your Intel UHD doesnt have activated dithering by default, what could be the issue with arc750…?

Unfortunately, I don't have a definitive answer to this question.

To me, the default image from the ARC A770 appears sharper and more contrasty compared to the Intel UHD 48EUs on any operating system. My eyes tend to prefer a slightly softer image.

When comparing Windows 11 on the PC (ARC A770) to Windows 11 on MBP M1, the first thing I notice with the Apple Silicon is a much flatter image - less contrasty and less sharp. This provides my eyes with maximum comfort. It seems that certain aspects of image processing in Windows 11 do not function properly when the OS is running on Parallels on an Apple Silicon Mac. Either the Apple Silicon M1 graphics card processes the image in a way that sharpness and contrast are not boosted.

As a result, I think this difference might be due to variations in the processing algorithms applied to the image (including gamma/color/etc correction). These could stem from the GPU hardware pipeline itself or differences in the software.

In my case, dithering is disabled by default, but with a graphics card from another vendor, the behavior might be different. Theoretically, there could also be hidden hardware defects resulting in jitter or high-frequency flickering.

We still know very little about how it all works internally and what the mechanisms of its effect on our eyes are.