DELL S2417DG/S2716DG Banding Fix? Sort of...Enabling Dithering

[Wonderin]

Sure. It worked bugged anyway on previous versions, always randomly turned off etc. 

[Rawrso]

Other than the bug with is disabling after screen turn off I haven't really had much trouble with it on 1809

[Wonderin]

Some people say it would stop working during playing games. It differs. I've read the 23 pages of that crazy odyssey at geforce forum today and people are struggling a lot with this shit.

I can't downgrade my windows anyway. They say one should set the color range to limited and then tweak the color vibrance to save those washed colors. I haven't tried it, but limited colors should be not a good idea. 

 

I hope they will implement dithering in the driver someday. But there is almost no hope

[Rawrso]

On 6/7/2019 at 7:45 PM, Wonderin said:

Some people say it would stop working during playing games. It differs. I've read the 23 pages of that crazy odyssey at geforce forum today and people are struggling a lot with this shit.

I can't downgrade my windows anyway. They say one should set the color range to limited and then tweak the color vibrance to save those washed colors. I haven't tried it, but limited colors should be not a good idea. 

 

I hope they will implement dithering in the driver someday. But there is almost no hope

I couldn't deal with the limited color range I tried that too. Honestly if it gets broken for good I'll probably make an attempt to sell this monitor and look for something else because it literally makes everything look so horrible I deem it unplayable or maybe I'll switch to team red which don't have these issue.

[Wonderin]

19 hours ago, Rawrso said:

I couldn't deal with the limited color range I tried that too. Honestly if it gets broken for good I'll probably make an attempt to sell this monitor and look for something else because it literally makes everything look so horrible I deem it unplayable or maybe I'll switch to team red which don't have these issue.

I used to think it's okay for tn panels until i found out these threads. I have a slight problem when i play quake champions, in the menu there is a black background with mild lights and grey smoke, and that looks terrible. but that's the only thing i noticed over the years. i'm not sure if other monitors would work better and if i can sell it for a decent price. 

[Wonderin]

Ok there might be a fix for that 1903 dithering problem. You gotta try to disable windows color manager calibration loader in the windows task scheduler.

[Ambious]

16 hours ago, Wonderin said:

Ok there might be a fix for that 1903 dithering problem. You gotta try to disable windows color manager calibration loader in the windows task scheduler.

Mine is already disabled so it's not that

[Rawrso]

3 hours ago, Ambious said:

Mine is already disabled so it's not that

In task scheduler not in the WCM I outlined right?

[OzzyFox]

I have the Dell S2417DG and I've tried this with all of the settings. But this isnt work (
Windows 1809, 431.36. Any suggestions? Thanks

[judgevictor]

I hope I'm not too late to the party. Short overview: After playing GTA V, I noticed some odd colors in the sky and dark areas, after checking online I noticed this thing called color banding so luckily I have an extra monitor to test the colors out. I saw something like this:

 

What it should look like

 

 

What I get on s2716dg

 

 

I found out that it is because of something called dithering. This is because the mix NVIDIA + WINDOWS. Is it a driver problem? Could be. But after installing PopOS thanks to the recommendation youtube video on LTT's channel, I discovered this:

DITHERING OFF
 

 

DITHERING ON

 

This was a breakthrough for me because now I know that this isn't just some random monitor problem, although I cannot seem to get windows to replicated the same gradient smoothing. So I will perform more tests and update the post.

[Rawrso]

13 hours ago, judgevictor said:

I hope I'm not too late to the party. Short overview: After playing GTA V, I noticed some odd colors in the sky and dark areas, after checking online I noticed this thing called color banding so luckily I have an extra monitor to test the colors out. 

GTA was horrible about it. Especially at night, everything dark looked all washed out and horrible.

So far this is still working for me, granted I'm still on 1809. I've seen a lot more issues with it on the newer Windows versions. Its I guess still known monitors sleeping breaks it.

 

[judgevictor]

17 hours ago, Rawrso said:

GTA was horrible about it. Especially at night, everything dark looked all washed out and horrible.

So far this is still working for me, granted I'm still on 1809. I've seen a lot more issues with it on the newer Windows versions. Its I guess still known monitors sleeping breaks it.

Could not agree more regarding GTA V but I also noticed it recently whilst playing Hellblade Senua's Sacrifice and it's starting to become annoying. I have a good mind to revert and test this case. I never put my PC to sleep. Only Shutdown and turning back on again. Thanks to M.2  Ill do more tests on version 1809, I just wish I had an AMD card to make the last batch of tests and then shove this all in NVIDIA's face. 

 

[judgevictor]

15 hours ago, judgevictor said:

Ill do more tests on version 1809

OK, so I reverted back to version 1809 via the Windows October 2018 ISO update form the Microsoft site. I installed the latest Nvidia drivers 436.30 and got to testing. I checked if I had any color profile activated, none. So I took a picture of the Dark Souls 3 image and then added the Dithering Key in the registry and took another picture.

 

VERY IMPORTANT: I did not notice any difference at first because apparently this monitor has a very high gamma setting. I lowered it to 0.600 and you can definitely see the difference. If i set the gamma higher on my second monitor I can actuality replicate a similar result there too. So definitely lower the gamma.

Before

After

 

Now after getting this work, I was wondering why it does not work on version of 1903 and I did notice that on version 1809 I have both folders:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\State\DisplayDatabase\

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\DisplayDatabase\

 

Whereas on the 1903 there is only one of these folders:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\State\DisplayDatabase\

Perhaps something is missing on the registry entirely.

 

Thank you very much Rawrso for putting all this together.

[judgevictor]

On 7/12/2019 at 11:28 AM, OzzyFox said:

I have the Dell S2417DG and I've tried this with all of the settings. But this isnt work (
Windows 1809, 431.36. Any suggestions? Thanks

Have you tried lowering the gamma? At 1.000 I noticed it's too high and you will not see a difference, for me 0.600 perfect but some can see this as too dark so maybe try 0.700?

[kamiraasu]

This dithering enabling in registry made all the difference.

I cant distinguish amd from nvidia after that on same display.

I would go for 8bit temporal.

 

This dithering is a bit like 'oh it might work now now but not on next boot.

And it seems that nvidia driver update overwrites registry, removing it every time for now.

And you then have to give full control for administrator in registry again.

But copy/paste this in regedit and you get close with minimal hasle:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm

You can also save that dithering reg_binary by:

-selecting it

-file

-export

-and selecting where you want to apply it from again if its lost.

 

You always need to reboot to make it work.

Driver restart?

'nah, did not work for me.

 

Usefull tools to see what your settings below are doing for you:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php  this reveals banding -if dithering is off

 

I've got ASUSPG248Q and i can say it has pretty terrible image quality.

I bet that fiddling with gamma will help on many other display makes and models too! Looks like weird gamma is common problem, hiding some banding?

 

From NVCP i turned:

Brightness:50%

Contrast:40%

Gamma:0,5 

(This lower gamma value makes less steep slope for gradients towards black, removing haze, BUT IT REALLY NEEDS DITHERING ON or it will have insane banding)

 

Display (mainly adjusting brightness with these):

Brightness:10%

Contrast:40%

Gamma:2.2

 

*Remember that these exact values can make different results even on same display model.

*Finetune with links above.

 

Looks decent to me now

 

And btw, i use this to keep NVCP color on fullscreen, doesnt work always.

http://goebish.free.fr/cpk/

 

Absolutely precious topic Rawrso, thank you!

[Ambious]

7 hours ago, kamiraasu said:

This dithering enabling in registry made all the difference.

I cant distinguish amd from nvidia after that on same display.

I would go for 8bit temporal.

 

This dithering is a bit like 'oh it might work now now but not on next boot.

And it seems that nvidia driver update overwrites registry, removing it every time for now.

And you then have to give full control for administrator in registry again.

But copy/paste this in regedit and you get close with minimal hasle:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm

You can also save that dithering reg_binary by:

-selecting it

-file

-export

-and selecting where you want to apply it from again if its lost.

 

You always need to reboot to make it work.

Driver restart?

'nah, did not work for me.

 

Usefull tools to see what your settings below are doing for you:
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/white.php
http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/gradient.php  this reveals banding -if dithering is off

 

I've got ASUSPG248Q and i can say it has pretty terrible image quality.

I bet that fiddling with gamma will help on many other display makes and models too! Looks like weird gamma is common problem, hiding some banding?

 

From NVCP i turned:

Brightness:50%

Contrast:40%

Gamma:0,5 

(This lower gamma value makes less steep slope for gradients towards black, removing haze, BUT IT REALLY NEEDS DITHERING ON or it will have insane banding)

 

Display (mainly adjusting brightness with these):

Brightness:10%

Contrast:40%

Gamma:2.2

 

*Remember that these exact values can make different results even on same display model.

*Finetune with links above.

 

Looks decent to me now

 

And btw, i use this to keep NVCP color on fullscreen, doesnt work always.

http://goebish.free.fr/cpk/

 

Absolutely precious topic Rawrso, thank you!

What version of Windows are you running?

[kamiraasu]

1809 (Os Build 17763.832)

And i have only one folder like judgevictor had on 1903.

Perhaps the registry path without ...\State... is from legacy driver?

I will be shoutíng here if i stumble upon whats the deal with 1903 problem.

 

I have no problem, dithering here and i like it.

(For now, only on one boot it failed to work.)

 

Nvidia c'mon, this has major impact on how you look.

Dithering has huge positive impact on current displays.

Checkboxes to NVCP for enabling variety of dithering and i sure will buy again!

[kamiraasu]

Just now i noticed that changing displays(ASUSPG248Q in my case) refresh by enabling "over clocking" in its menu made new folder for same display in registry with slightly altered name.

I think it can cause dithering not to be applied every time because im having problems now with it..

 

For solution i would remove display registry folders that wont be in use or

add "DitherRegistryKey" to all of them with the same values.

 

Display folders have more than 3 entries.

I think that is how they can be recognised.

Edited October 31, 2019 by kamiraasu
Worked for me(13 days flawlessly) after this post. I wont update to 1903 just in case.

[kamiraasu]

1909 is out, i wonder if the dithering is even harder to get working on it.
 

Noticed one other possible scenario that might cause dithering to fail.

Dithering will(or could) fail to work on next start up if i leave browser open when i shutdown.

 

Going to be shutting down every window before restarts for now, just to see how it goes.

[Rawrso]

13 minutes ago, kamiraasu said:

1909 is out, i wonder if the dithering is even harder to get working on it.
 

Noticed one other possible scenario that might cause dithering to fail.

Dithering will(or could) fail to work on next start up if i leave browser open when i shutdown.

 

Going to be shutting down every window before restarts for now, just to see how it goes.

I never seemed to have that issue. However I dont think I'm on a new windows build

 

[kamiraasu]

Judging on previous posts, you are still on 1809 like me.

This version is working fine if there is no energy saving breaking it: shutting down monitor.

Nvidia driver update breaks it too until next restart.

 

Checking windows version:

Press: Windows button + R

Type: winver

Hit: enter

[Rawrso]

6 hours ago, kamiraasu said:

Judging on previous posts, you are still on 1809 like me.

This version is working fine if there is no energy saving breaking it: shutting down monitor.

Nvidia driver update breaks it too until next restart.

 

Checking windows version:

Press: Windows button + R

Type: winver

Hit: enter

Yeet still on 1809. I was always hesitant to update because of breaking dithering

 

[Massev]

I created an account just to tell everyone it's the brightness. That is it. Compared to my 4k ips laptop screen. Just turn the brightness down a lot. Third image is default settings on blade stealth screen. The brightness is just cranked on these monitors

[kamiraasu]

This is true.

Problem is that my and many others displays brightness are at 0 brightness already.

Weird gamma in nvcp and dithering solves in this case.

 

My 10 year old display is set like you say and it hides the banding on dark gradients.

Some led panels brighness simply doesnt go that low.

 

To be honest, i have been thinking about opening the display and tinkering the backlight.

But i would only end up breaking it, so.

 

Dithering ftw.

[Rawrso]

Operating at minimum brightness kinda sucks unless your a hermit. I don't even have my brightness that high and it still has bad banding. Also certain models are worse than others too