Last night I installed Enterprise versions of 8.1 and 10 into an empty partition on my machine and dual-booted into them just to see what it was like.

8.1 was trash, it didn't last very long before being wiped. Interface complaints aside, while it was usable even with the exact same video driver as with my win 7 install it wasn't an improvement. The backlight on 7 appeared to be more stable. Also ran into an issue where dual boot trashed my ability to log back into 7, freezing at classpnp.sys. I eventually figured out I needed to turn legacy boot back on in the bios. After that, dual boot worked fine. It was probably working fine before with legacy off because I had grub as the bootloader which has full uefi support. There was one good thing about 8.1 though. Due to its more up to date driver infrastructure it was able to show me that my USB enclosure/drive isn't defective. I couldn't understand why in 7 writes were 2x as fast as reads over USB 3. It's some kind of software issue because in 8.1 reads were full speed.

Next, I tried 10. Since I had never tried 10 on my machine before I needed a baseline to refer against especially in light of the 2004 thread so I installed 1507. My interest in doing so was I had remembered Gurm saying he thought it might even be better than 7 and a fair few other people here liked 1511 fine.

It booted up into the MS Basic Display Adapter and I was quite surprised by how stable the image looked. Unfortunately due to the auto-update nature of 10 it means that I need to repeat it without a network connection with auto-updates disabled in order to give me a moment to really look at it with that adapter (will need to disable auto-updates in the settings).

While looking at it in basic it suddenly snapped in a Intel driver from 2016. Image slightly worse but not bad. Right-clicked and had it search for more, it located a 2017 dated driver. Not worse. At this point I figured since it was a touch unstable having experienced at least one crash opening a folder and wanting to test basic mode more, prior to that I decided to download and install the latest driver version from Intel's site, reported as wddm 2.0 in dxdiag.

Much to my surprise the latest version was better. Even though the image seemed duller/less saturated with a different white point (might be an auto-installed colour profile) it was presenting a picture that appeared smoother and didn't have as much of that shimmer which I was seeing in 7.

Conclusion, interface and other complaints aside like blurry fonts due to dpi virtualization, 1507 on my hardware appears at first glance to be less tiring than 7 which is already the baseline I measure against. I will need to spend more time with it but I am pleasantly surprised as it's nice to test a still supported OS with the latest Intel driver (ltsb 2015 receives security updates until 2025). I think I will also take a look at 2004 as well though I tend to not like rolling software updates which introduce bugs and instability that Windows 10 is notorious for.

On a future date I'll play around with other OSes on this machine too (BSD, Linux) possibly including MacOS as well though that one I might try just on the external drive.

@tfouto since we have the same hardware and bios other than the cpu, you should consider dual booting your 8.1 install. It's easy enough, free up 33 gigs of space, and do a custom install (not upgrade) to the empty partition space created.

    Sunspark Right now i wont dual boot my NUc since it is only 128GB SSD, and it's my working remote computer. Maybe later.
    I have installed Windows 7 on old Toshipa Laptop Sattelite. Really old.
    When i finished installing Windows 7, maybe early builds, the letters were super sharp, and image was super stable.
    Then windows installed all updates. Lots of them, the screen was not so stable, and letters are not so stable.
    So i think that Windows 7 along the way, changed something regarding drivers or color profile.

        tfouto Yeah, if you update IE to 11 or Office past version 2010 or the platform update, it'll disable cleartype subpixel. That's what happened there. The rest was driver, but you don't have to update the driver. You can test this out for yourself, install it into a virtual machine, then install those updates I mentioned and look with the magnifier tool.

            Sunspark is it posible to enable cleartype subpixel? Every thing seems more dificult to focus.

              Does this mean upgrading (from IE 8) to IE 11 enables gray scaling fonts system-wide? I skipped all optional updates (which include a "platform update") and the recommended IE 11 upgrade on purpose based on a gut feeling but without really knowing that this could prevent eye strain.
              Maybe uninstalling those upgrades (if possible) could revert the changes then.

              @tfouto If you don't have those 3 items, yes.. but if you have even 1, then no.

              @KM Yes that's what it means.

              • KM likes this.
              8 months later

              Sunspark Big necro, and I remember you are dual-booting 7 and 2004 right now, but if you try 1507 again for this problem you can try Windows Update Blocker. It works really well. And for fix the blurry fonts get WIndows 10 DPI Fix, tool specifically for these old Windows 10 builds (http://windows10-dpi-fix.xpexplorer.com/). Works really well and gives clear fonts.

              I'm making an ISO of 7 now for my XPS 7590, with the MDL script which uses Win 10 as the install environment. Will need some tweaking to get it all going (EDIT: no Wifi driver exists..)but I hope to compare it between 1507 and 2004 which I have already had running on here. On my desktop I also thought 1507 was a bit easier on the eyes than 7, but I didn't extensively try it with desktop composition off and I seem to remember that makes a big difference on 7.

              What I really want to try is Vista with Extended Kernel on my desktop, apparently it runs great.

              EDIT: Windows 7 is WORSE than 1507 LTSB.

                13 days later

                I cleared out disk space today, and popped 1507 into a partition to check it out, used the same video driver # as I am using in 20H2. 1507 sure has a fair bit of UI rough edges compared to 5 years of polishing here and there that has gone into the main line. It's usable, but it didn't leap out at me after I was done tweaking settings. I didn't feel like there was enough of a difference to justify using it compared to something else. It's amazing how busted W10 is.. apparently the March update has busted people's printers. Seems like every month there is a new problem, it's ridiculous. My 20H2 system is still paused at December. I spend almost all my time now in 20H2 instead of 7, which surprises me.

                Incidentally, you can slap New Edge on 1507, if you download the installer from MS's Business Downloads page.

                Vista w/ extended kernel sounds intriguing, but what's the point if you already have 7? 7 is basically XP to Vista's 2000.

                I'll probably try compiling Funtoo in the next couple weeks and see how that goes since I have the partition available now.

                I looked at this again today.. I'm displeased because in addition to encrypted media extensions not being available in 1507 LSTB which means Netflix is resolution and bitrate starved, I wasn't able to fix it by trying to install the feature pack for the N and KN editions. So, this basically means only silverlight in IE if you plan to watch netflix on 1507 LTSB.

                There is more to say though..

                The March cumulative update (maybe one of the other ones as well that goes along with it released roughly round the same time, it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly which because they all went in at once) I noticed on 20H2 that it changed the rendering a bit in a way I didn't like. It basically makes it look like the screen is flickering without actually flickering.

                This update goes to 1507 and 8.1 as well, so if you notice anything changing, that's why.

                So this is a problem now, because even if you're running an older base build, an update can still update graphics-related components. So what is the solution? To not update like I stopped doing with W7? The next big W10 update isn't till the fall. The April one is still part of the 2004/20H1 threshold.

                  I worked backwards and uninstalled KB4589198 KB5000807 KB4535680 KB4598231.

                  Observed an improvement with the removal of KB4598231. This is the January cumulative update, which means you cannot install KB5000807 either (March). The other two are probably ok, one is a microcode update and the other is a secure boot update.

                  I recommend no further cumulative update beyond December 2020 for 1507.

                  7 months later

                  I previously said Windows 10 1507 is more tolerable than Windows 7. I was wrong. The updates that you mentioned @Sunspark (Platform update, IE11, etc.) really do ruin Windows 7. Using Windows 7 with NO updates has been an upgrade (lol) vs Windows 10 1507.

                  I would like to try Windows 8 with no updates, since "DPI Virtualization became the default for all settings over 96 DPI in Windows 8.1." This is similar to the problem that causes Windows 10 1507 to have blurry fonts.

                  Microsoft really started messing up rendering far earlier than Windows 10 1607, although obviously that was a very big change for the worse.

                  Edit: Windows 8 no updates no driver is strainy. Actually it feels much like Windows 10 1507. Not terrible but still strainy. The basic driver in Windows 8 is too capable. I guess the only way to truly stop the GPU acceleration is:

                  Windows 7 no updates no drivers

                  OR

                  Windows XP can be tolerated with drivers. Probably technical limitations of the old XP display driver model.

                  Edit 2:

                  XDDM supported on Server 2008 R2. Could install drivers on this (still security updated), with benefits of old 2000/XP driver model @KM ? It should be Windows 7 except with this support? Maybe we can use strainy cards which we can currently only use in XP.

                  Edit 3:

                  I could not get Nvidia XPDM drivers installed on Server 2008 R2.

                  I would sugest you give 8.1 one more try, believe me, with tweaking it can be the most stable and beautiful looking of them all

                  Not to mention, with intel drivers 20.19.15.4444 from 2016 and ditherig, it feels paper-like.

                  Greeting from a many years 8.1 user! 😀

                    Alyosha2001

                    Thanks for posting. Your setup does look very good.

                    Are you using any tweaks to have fonts looking better?

                    (In 8.0, you get “Use XP style DPI scaling” which seems nicer)

                      Thank you! The bold font is very easy to achieve, all

                      you have to do it tick the box like in the screenshot, to all the 5 categories.

                      I would mention that the aero glass tweak is very stable, had no issues with it, the resources consumption is like almost none, FAR better than the official Win7 implementation.

                      For me this is the best OS made until now, and with lots of arguments in it's favor Been using it intensely on video editing and graphics computers, very long renderings, all I can say is to highly recommend it, if you hardware allows.

                      On Windows 8.0, with no Nvidia graphics driver there is a ton of banding on the default desktop background. When I install the driver all the banding goes away and no disable dithering tweaks to work to bring it back. I will try Intel next.

                      I thought my Quadro K4000 was free of dithering. Well I guess it could be said it is free from the always on VBIOS level dithering in newer cards, but the driver is still telling it to dither once installed.

                      Windows 7 is the last Windows OS you can really trust not to screw with your vision/eyes. Starting with Windows 8 Microsoft completely rewrote the dispaly subsystem, disabled the ability to turn off Aero, and forced all elements through the desktop rendering engine which adds an entire extra layer of processing before you see what you see on the screen.

                      Stick with 7

                      5 days later

                      Edit: This post no longer reflects my current opinion. I have been able to install display drivers on Windows 8.1. Also, 8.0 has very different rendering than 8.1 after further testing.

                      Windows 7 is working on my XPS 7590 Intel 9th Gen laptop. Only thing is it needs USB Wifi, since the internal adapter has only Windows 10 drivers. Standard VGA driver is running it at 1080p native resolution.

                      After a lot of testing I found that 8.1 and 10 1507/1511 have almost the same rendering (which is really not that bad compared to modern OS), maybe 10 is a bit cleaner, but it's not that noticeable. As we already know 1607 is when it dramatically changes. The only reason I bring this up is that if 2015 LTSB is not tolerable 8/8.1 are not likely to be tolerable either. But 8.1 specifically has the advantage of running .Net 4.8. 2015 LTSB can only do 4.6.2.

                      But 7 is its own beast. I find it tolerable on the Standard VGA driver in a way that 8/8.1/1507 is not. With drivers installed it's not as special. That Standard VGA driver seems very limited in a way that is good for me.

                      Standard VGA Driver > Basic Display Adapter (8/8,1, early 10) > Drivers on either

                      I still want to do something with XP again. That's my next project. I want to transfer material for offline viewing on to an XP machine. It doesn't have to go online.

                      Honestly, I find 19042.867 perfectly comfortable on my setup. Noticeably enough so that I actually stopped using 7. I still have the partition waiting there as a fallback, but I don't boot into it anymore.

                      Part of the reason I am not willing to use the Standard VGA/Basic Display is because I need hardware acceleration for video playback. I don't have a TV so everything is done on my monitor. Without acceleration, there would be too much tearing, etc.

                        Sunspark

                        The experience on the Standard VGA / Basic Display adapter is really bad, especially since I need a multi-monitor setup. I mean it’s ridiculous to be using a computer this way in 2021.

                        As you can tell though, I’m really just grasping at straws here with my experiments until I find a real solution. I really do give every build of Windows a shot including the newer builds of 10 including all the updates, and 11. I try all the outputs on both Intel and Nvidia adapters including trying converter cables. I also fiddle with different driver versions (including different colour spaces) and settings. No luck yet.

                        I do have a G-sync laptop on the way to try.

                        I would like nothing more than to find 19042 comfortable. Just no luck so far.

                        Edit: I’ve also just got an eye patch now since it was recommended to me here recently. Maybe it will help.

                            4 days later

                            Alyosha2001

                            I gave 8.1 another shot and actually it seems I can install my display adapter drivers in 8.1, but not in 7 or 2015 LTSB (differences in WDDM between all three versions). So maybe there is something to 8.1 after all. I am testing it now and especially on my Intel adapter I am very impressed. Also it's probably good you are using Intel driver from 2016 and not 2017 (Intel iGPU Driver Patch Notes - Dithering - LEDStrain Forum).

                            I am excited. Which Start Menu replacement are you using?

                                dev