JTL I'm beginning to think issues like this are a mix of hardware and drivers interacting with each other.

Like I've said before, wish you could visit me and there's a good chance with my capture hardware and analysis software we could probably find out what's different.

The GPU output stage (maintained by the VBIOS?) is the elephant in the room. There could be a 'perfect' Windows driver/OS, but does the Windows driver interact with the actual VBIOS settings? All dithering could be disabled at the driver/OS level, but at the BIOS/VBIOS level, the output might be fixed to dither regardless of the monitor/OS. Although for an image to display at all I would imagine there would be some sort of handshake from the OS through to the GPU output stage.

This is perhaps why I'm having trouble with some devices even on W10 V2004 and older drivers. If the output itself is dithering or otherwise then I have no control over changing it. (Or the opposite, as mentioned above, a 'good' video output with a bad driver is causing issues). 😛

@si_edgey Did you get any update from Microsoft/Intel? A few members of the GFX team are active on Reddit. I am hopeful that this is the year we find a solution.

  • JTL replied to this.

      diop but does the Windows driver interact with the actual VBIOS settings

      It can in certain circumstances. (This is how "ditherig.exe" with Intel graphics works) but the methods can differ (pun not intended) based on GPU model and driver involved so having a universal control isn't easily attainable

        2 months later

        Upgraded today to 2004 and massive improvement. Seem to get no problems.

        Only other things I did were move down from say 30% brightness to 20%. And re-try doing the IntelPWMcontrol although I got an error when I ran it.

        (Dell laptop)

        a month later

        si_edgey I've installed W10 2004 on my desktop machine too (Nvidia GTX 770) and updated to the latest drivers and I'm pretty confident in saying I can use that without issues also - so far I've not had any symptoms but it needs more testing. I would say that the newest Nvidia drivers feel better to me than the older ones which is also good news.

        good day, @si_edgey
        can you write your detailed "desktop machine" config?
        motherboard/ OS(version_build)/ possibly registry tweaks?/ 770 vendor_model/ GPU driver version/ interface(DP_DVI_HDMI)/ monitor_model /monitor color profile
        ..and please make a screenshot of the GPU-Z, your "known-good GeForce 770"

          19 days later

          Windows 20H2 is out. Who will be the first brave enough to try it? 😃
          I am still on 1903 on my desktop and 1809 on my working laptop. I need to buy a second SSD for trying this type of upgrade.

            Lauda89 Me, actually. Stuff blew up last night on my drives, so I had to clean up the mess which took a long time. I was just in 20H2 just now as a clean install in the testing partition I have for it. It's exactly the same as 2004 and the Intel drivers for it are still the same ones as before. Edge Legacy has been removed from this build--too bad because I used to stream from within that browser. People who are fine with 2004 will be fine with 20H2 too, the difference after the cumulative monthly updates is apparently only a few megabytes, that's how similar they are. 7 is still my daily driver though.. my computer is a dual-core and W10 is heavier and slower on it so I really only pop into it sometimes for streaming services.

            You don't need another SSD, if you don't have other OSes other than Windows, then it's easy to have multiple Windows versions on the same drive. 40 GB is all you need for a W10 partition. When you do an install, you just select custom install and select the partition you want it to use. The bootloaders for 7 to 10 are aware of each other and you'll have a boot menu to choose from. The menu can also see other OSes as well, but it's harder to work with, and frankly next time I play with one of those on my external SSD, I am going to disable the internal SSD to do the install on the external, and then when I want to use it, I will use the computer's UEFI boot menu itself to select to boot from the other drive like a USB stick.. this way I can leave 1 drive with an untouched Windows bootloader instead of daisy-chained.

              Lauda89 Word on the street is that the pricing of flash memory has gotten cheaper because of people buying less phones year after year. So excluding pandemic related supply issues, it's pretty close to the ideal time to buy a new SSD in terms of price per gigabyte.

                Gave Windows 10 2004 (well 20H2, but I can confirm the rendering is exactly the same) another shot. Besides eye strain and face muscle tightening, it also makes my legs twitch after a while. Intel’s 26 and 27 drivers are worse than an old 22 which I found to work with my UHD 630, but it’s not good enough. This machine is usable for me on Windows 2015 LTSB with the 22 driver. I have been using that machine for up to eight hours a day (only once a week, other days are three hours), which is unheard of for me since probably over 12 years ago. Still not as bad as Kubuntu 20.04 which was instant torture (could not get anything non-Ubuntu based to load).

                The twitching though, that pretty unusual symptom for me, and I've only experienced it on one other device (Huawei P30).

                Since I'm rambling, I'll mention that I finally found a comfortable browser for myself, Pale Moon. Chrome is uncomfortable on any Windows version. Waterfox Classic didn't work for me either. I find Pale Moon streaming Netflix is very comfortable, much better than the PS3 (Which isn't all that comfortable. I just thought it was in comparison to much worse options).

                Anyway, the dithering pattern on the same wallpaper (I presume. It's noise. Like the snowy channel on old TVs) is much more pronounced and harsher on Windows 10 2004. I am running ditherig on both and compared on the internal panel and on an external monitor.

                I have the exact same machine (replacement for the first one, which has some problems, such as turning off when you move it quickly, but Dell never asked for it back) set up with 2015 LTSB, and I can actually feel the muscles in my face and especially around my left eye unclench when I look back over to it.

                  Minor update: I realized some of the slowness/heaviness was due to animations. Turning them off to match what I had set in 7 made it pretty comparable, so that was nice.

                  degen The 22 vs 26/27 isn't solely the thing.. it's also the build # as well in the same series.. I know from my own comp different build #s of the same branch will present differently which I find odd and annoying because there's no consistency, but it's reproducible. Instead of using what 10 serves up (which can be quite old in some cases) you could try downloading directly from Intel's site. Their drivers aren't OEM-locked anymore, so you can actually install them on any comp now and see if it is any better. There is also a setting in the W10 new control panel to turn off the OS force-installing drivers for you.. so I'm thinking if you liked that 22 branch driver, if you disable driver force-update in the settings--if you don't, it will re-install what it thinks you should have, you could manually force-install the 22.* branch on top of what's there now in the device manager. Something I've done many times with audio drivers. Might be worth trying. To make your life a little easier while testing, I suggest setting a system restore point before starting.

                  About Netflix, you don't necessarily have to use the HTML5 player.. you can also use the Silverlight player. On 7 I use waterfox classic 2020.01 still because it's quite comfy for me but I have the useragent adjusted for the netflix site so that it will use the silverlight plugin instead of HTML5, looks better. Pale Moon is an old fork and is too slow for me. To use Silverlight, in any Firefox-type browser about:config settings create a new string "general.useragent.override.netflix.com" and for the string value enter "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0". Leave out the quotes. Of course, also download and install silverlight itself from Microsoft's site.

                  What version of ditherig are you using? I was testing with 1.11 and I can see a subtle difference when it is active in 10.

                  Laptop machines are susceptible to manufacturing variances.. display panel, firmware bios, etc. cannot say it is the same machine unless you know for sure the parts and version numbers.

                    5 days later

                    so better 2004 or 19xx? I don't know whether to update ... and I don't know whether to block other automatic updates. advice?

                      Sofista90 Go ahead and update if you're already on a Win10 build, 2004 is not worse than 1903. If you're not, then that depends, as the video driver you're using does make a difference as does how you connect to the display.

                        11 days later

                        • [deleted]

                        • Post #147

                        The 2004 version gives me the same eye strain as 1903. I still think the Intel UHD driver is the issue here. Uninstall this driver and use basic display driver, my eyes gets back to normal again.

                          Did anyone get a forced win update yesterday? did it change anything?

                            si_edgey I am using it too and it works pretty well.
                            Now I have to find an easy way to test the new updates.
                            I could buy a new ssd nvme pci 4.0 and transfer my current setup on it and start using my current ssd sata for trying new W10 versions.
                            Do you use any cloning programs to make backups?

                                Lauda89 I do actually, I use Acronis True Image which will clone your SSD so you can easily take it back to the last working state - it works very well.

                                There is also the option to roll back to the last version of Windows for 30 days after you do a major update, but I'd much rather know that everything is exactly as it was before the update..

                                • JTL replied to this.

                                    si_edgey but I'd much rather know that everything is exactly as it was before the update..

                                    Agreed here

                                      [deleted] Agreed, I believe the Intel UHD drivers are to blame - 2004 on an Intel UHD chip doesn't work for me, the latest Intel graphics I can use (from the tests I've been able to do) is the HD 630 with the 2016 drivers.

                                        Anybody tried 20H2, or is it tempting fate?

                                          diop I have and can use 20H2 in one of my OS partitions, however I am still using 7 as my daily. 20H2 appears the same as 2004, and uses the same drivers. It's kind of interesting how uncontrollable some variables are.. for example, using the dp-to-hdmi dongle I have, I have established that in 20H2 using the 4624 video driver the picture is better with YCbCr in full-range compared to RGB mode, but with Win7 and the 4279 video driver using the same dongle the picture is better with RGB instead of YCbCr.

                                          The two that were offered up by MS as choices in W10, 4531 and 4624, I used 4531 for awhile but then switched to 4624 because I found the screen seemed "glassier" compared to 4531. I have no understanding of why these subtle differences exist, but they are present. I am also able to observe subtle differences between different dongles (I have a few) as they use different chips.

                                          I have also observed that for the older chips Intel is no longer developing them (except for other OSes like Linux) and any updates for chips like my HD 6000 gpu are only security fixes. All their driver work is only for the latest chips on separate branches.

                                          • diop replied to this.
                                              dev