Horizontal lines in dark areas can be fixed on affected old LVDS-monitor notebooks! MSI GT783, G73JH

For many years I thought it was a hardware problem with my MSI GT783/GT780 17" notebook with old 6 bit LVDS monitor: either monitor's fault or GPU's or motherboard or LDS cable.

I could see atrocious color blending of 2 dark colors by horizontal lines, meaning when there should be a color for example between dark red and dark grey I actually saw a stripe of dark red and a stripe of dark grey instead of actual mix of those (look at example). As if for some reason monitor was limited to show actual stuff and showed mess instead. You can imagine that clarity of image was always diminished in some scenes as if I had prison filter turned on dark areas.

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https://hub-assets.displaycal.net/w...andolyx/2021/04/03/20210403_211751-scaled.jpg

The problem did not eradicate if I increased Gamma in game settings, those stripes were going brighter instead of being diminished... UNTIL I finally found the topic about Nvidia Driver Dithering regedit hacks discovered only few years ago!

Long story short: that was a built-in Nvidia Spatial Dynamic 2x2 dithering settings incompatible with my hardware giving those side-effects. Using registry hack for enabling another type of dithering (either 6 bit Temporal or 6 bit Spatial Static 2x2 eliminates that decade long artifacting bug! 30-sec workaround!

Affected models: MSI GT780/GT783, ASUS G73JH judging by this Nvidia Topic and possibly others.

Spoiler: Comparison BEFORE and AFTER

https://hub-assets.displaycal.net/wp-content/uploads/users/slandolyx/2021/04/03/mpv-shot0004.png

Spoiler: Nvidia Dithering Fix thanks to Guzz and Enterprise24

How to enable/disable dithering:

• Export your registry settings from:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\State\DisplayDatabase\YOUR_DISPLAY_NAME_HERE
  or
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\nvlddmkm\DisplayDatabase\YOUR_DISPLAY_NAME_HERE
• Add into your exported registry file one of the following setting:

1. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 6 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,00,00,00,ed,00,00,00
2. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 6 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,00,01,ef,00,00,00
3. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 6 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic2x2
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,00,02,f0,00,00,00
4. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 6 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic2x2
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,00,03,f1,00,00,00
5. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 6 bit; ditherMode – Temporal
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,00,04,f2,00,00,00
6. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 8 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,01,00,ef,00,00,00
7. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 8 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,01,01,f0,00,00,00
8. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 8 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic2x2
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,01,02,f1,00,00,00
9. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 8 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic2x2
   "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,01,03,f2,00,00,00
10. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 8 bit; ditherMode – Temporal
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,01,04,f3,00,00,00
11. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 10 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,02,00,f0,00,00,00
12. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 10 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,02,01,f1,00,00,00
13. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 10 bit; ditherMode – SpatialDynamic2x2
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,02,02,f2,00,00,00
14. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 10 bit; ditherMode – SpatialStatic2x2
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,02,03,f3,00,00,00
15. ditherState – Enabled; ditherBits – 10 bit; ditherMode – Temporal
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,01,01,02,04,f4,00,00,00
16. ditherState – Default
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,00,00,01,04,f1,00,00,00
17. ditherState – Disabled
    "DitherRegistryKey"=hex:db,01,00,00,10,00,00,00,02,00,01,04,f3,00,00,00

• Import your new registry settings

• Reboot or restart video driver using restart64.exe – cru-1.4.1.zip

Mods, could you please add this post into The Official MSI GT783/GT780 Lounge?

 

are not the lines an indicator of failing gpu?

 

Also a bad lvds cable, bad lcd and other hardware and software problems. In this very case lines are an attempt to show an unsupported color by showing lines of 2 different colors instead. With this registry hack it uses more sophisticated techniques of dithering.
Obviously, these hacks work for all types of Nvidia-based systems so maybe a topic with proper name is needed but in the case of these models of MSI and ASUS notebooks it not just brings better result but also fixes a problem.