Arch Linux

philipW

Member

Registered: 2017-03-21

Posts: 145

[SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

hi,
I installed the nvidia drivers because nouveau gave me too much performance issues.
but i get weird lines when there is a transition between darkness in colors.
hard to explain so heres a photo i took with my phone (i found out if i take a screenshot and open it on another device you wouldnt see it so i think its a issue with my screen settings)
http://imgur.com/a/tBnkd

Last edited by philipW (2017-05-15 15:28:26)

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

I'm not quite sure what you talk about. When you google "color banding" and look at the image results, is this your problem?

If it is, in the nvidia-settings tool, you'll see an entry for your monitor on the left next to "thermal settings" and "powermizer". When you click on that, on the second tab named "controls", there's stuff for "dithering". Maybe those settings do something to fix this? If that helps, the strange thing about this problem would be that the monitor should already internally do stuff that hides that color banding.

philipW

Member

Registered: 2017-03-21

Posts: 145

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

Yeah it's color banding.
i tried to play around with the dithering settings but it didnt helped.
i am on a laptop btw.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

If you are on a laptop, does this mean the actual monitor is connected to an Intel GPU? There was a thread about color banding with Intel's stuff recently. It was caused by a bug in Intel's driver that got introduced with a certain kernel version.

philipW

Member

Registered: 2017-03-21

Posts: 145

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

If you are on a laptop, does this mean the actual monitor is connected to an Intel GPU? There was a thread about color banding with Intel's stuff recently. It was caused by a bug in Intel's driver that got introduced with a certain kernel version.

I have a nvidia gpu and no intergrated graphics so i think it has nothing to do with intel stuff.
Also i had no banding issues with nouveau.
i also tried different dpi's but that didnt do anything.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

There's nvidia forums for Linux here:

https://devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/linux/

Maybe create a thread there as well. I tried searching that forum with Google, search terms about color banding and "site:devtalk.nvidia.com/default/board/98/linux/", but didn't get any good results, so if you create a thread it really might be about something completely new.

There might be an official way to ask for support as well, some email address for Linux driver issues or something.

Last edited by Ropid (2017-05-15 12:39:20)

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

Another thing... what did you experiment with exactly in that "dithering" settings screen of the nvidia tool? The main thing that might help you is trying to set the "Depth" option to "6 bpc". The driver should then try to fake 8-bit colors on an 6-bit panel, hiding the color banding caused by 6-bit.

philipW

Member

Registered: 2017-03-21

Posts: 145

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

Oke i found out that if i open nvidia x server settings the color banding would be gone.
So i added nvidia x server settings to my startup programs.
The color banding issue is fixed.
Now i have to fuggure out how i can have nvidia settings start widout the window popping up.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: [SOLVED] nvidia driver color banding

It only loads and applies the things in its config file without showing a window when you run it like this:

nvidia-settings --load-config-only

See if that already fixes it. If yes, you'd add this command to a script ~/.xprofile if you use GDM, LightDM, etc.