Taking Action

JTL

diop but it confounds me how even the developers themselves don't say if dithering is enabled or how to disable it

I think part of the issue is even independent of the operating system and/or driver in use the video card can have it's own "starting settings", which the driver can either "use as is" or override it. This can impact things in unknown ways.

diop Does enough documentation exist to build a 'dither-free' Intel driver on Linux, or develop a way to disable it?

Documentation: No

But I suspect I myself could come up with something with enough free time and such. Not right now though.

diop knowing what PWM is (essentially an on/off strobe) and temporal dithering (a pixel flickering between two colors to generate the intermediate color), I wouldn't want either of them.

Agreed for sure

annv

JTL I believe it runs with only "basic" drivers that are running the hardware in a different way so the "vendor" drivers are doing "something" different. Side effects include lower performance and instability with certain applications.

Could you please tell what are "vendor" drivers? And what does it mean "doing something different"?

JTL

annv what are "vendor" drivers

Drivers that come from the GPU manufacturer, as opposed to the generic drivers that come with the operating system and have limited functionality

annv And what does it mean "doing something different"?

The vendor drivers may potentially be initializing the card in a different manner, which causes dithering or other eyestrain inducing modes to activate. Just a plausible theory why there is a difference.

ravipra

diop, I could disable dithering in linux intel driver (on Manjaro Linux kernel). However, since the xserver uses 8-bit color, and also presumably majority of the images on web pages are 8-bit, it results into visible banding. That somehow was not comfortable to me. But if someone is interested in trying out I can try again and give you a compiled intel driver or a source code patch for anyone who wants to try compiling on their own (or review my changes and see if there is anything wrong).

diop

Edward You can check if you are on Microsoft Basic Display Driver by running dxdiag.exe and selecting the display tab. It will state "Microsoft Basic Display Driver" near the top. It is very easy to enable the drivers again if you want to play games, do colour sensitive work, etc. For office applications and web browsing, I am happy to use the basic display driver.

Thanks for the tip. I gave it a try on a known bad device. It defaulted at 1024x768 and when attempting to change it to a higher res, it went to a black screen (hmm..). It definately looked calmer compared to the Intel driver, however IMO there is still some strain going on. I would say it would prolong my use on the machine but not for more than a few hours at most. I suspect maybe it's W10 shennanigans or just something in the VBIOS of this device. I may try it at a later date on a known good device to see if it makes a difference.

Which is making me realise, we could get a dither toggle tomorrow, but it is useless unless we can control what the VBIOS is doing first.

Edward

diop IMO there is still some strain going on

Yeah, agreed. I don't know if that's just LED lights or the software or both.

JTL

diop Which is making me realise, we could get a dither toggle tomorrow, but it is useless unless we can control what the VBIOS is doing first.

I suspect some GPUs have a preset "dither mode" when it boots up that the driver can override, but this is just some "informed speculation" from my research

diop

Intel are going to include Color Depth/Subsampling controls later this year in the updated Graphics Command Center.

We wanted to include the option to manually select Color Depth and Subsampling by end of Q4'19 or earlier Q1'20, but it was necessary to push it back (that is why I usually don't like providing ETAs as dates can shift). Rest assured that the feature is still on track for implementation in a next Intel Graphics Command Center release (updated target is Q2'20).

https://forums.intel.com/s/question/0D50P0000490JMTSA2/advanced-users-we-need-your-feedback-control-panel-color-configuration-options

JTL

diop If it actually does anything is a different story...

logixoul

diop Intel are going to include Color Depth/Subsampling controls later this year in the updated Graphics Command Center.

Seems they didn't include it. I just tried the Graphics Command Center and didn't see such an option. Did I miss something?

Larkenn

Edward To enable it in Windows 10 go to "Device Manager" and in the main part of the display "Display Adaptors" I select the Intel integrated graphics and I right click on "Disable Device".

Thanks for this information. Have just done this on my laptop and it's much easier to look at. Of course my graphics card is now endlessly bombarding me with notifications that the driver isn't working properly.

The only negative is that I can't seem to change the brightness of the screen. But I can live with that.

Larkenn

It's gone bad already. I started feeling nauseous about 2 mins ago. Oh well ... it felt good for maybe about 5 mins. Back to the drawing board again.

Edward

Larkenn Sorry to hear that. I don't have a 100% good solution, only solutions that I can tolerate in different ways.

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