# S2716DG color banding.



## cucker tarlson (Aug 30, 2017)

I've been using S2716DG for 19 months now, and while I love this monitor so much color banding has always been an issue for me, and many users reported it as well. It is most prominently visible in videos, and I watch a ton of them every day on youtube. I tried everything ppl say should alleviate the problem:
-custom icc profiles
-adjusting with contrast/brightness/colors in OSD
-adjusting gamma and vibrance in nvcp
and while they did help a little with color reproduction, the banding issue was still very pronounced.
Then,just today,I stumbled upon a trick that apparently works, don't know how and why, but the banding in videos in almost gone like with a snap of a finger. My monitor brightness was at 40% in OSD, and the brigtness setting in nvcp is default 50%. Terrible banding in some videos. Now just today,totally by chance, I discovered that putting the brightness in nvcp at 22% eliminates 99% of the banding for me, to the extent I can't see it anymore unless I squint and try to pick up very tiny details. Then I used the monitor's OSD to raise the brightness and the brightess is back to the same level it used to be before and banding is gone. This puzzles me a lot. Why does adjusting brightness in OSD not remove it, but adjusting it in nvcp works wonders?

Like in this video,before the brightness adjustments in nvcp, banding on the black backround and around the red album cover was clearly visible from 2 metes away, now it's almost completely gone even if I'm sitting close.










Not only banding on colors is greatly reduced, white looks a lot less "dirty" than it used to be before,colors are more vibrant. Quite frankly I'm stunned, the the monitor has never looked that good..... It's been 19 months I've been using it with banding and sort of greyish white color....


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## Enterprise24 (Aug 31, 2017)

What is your revision ? Mine is A04 and banding is quiet terrible.

Changing output dynamic range from full to limited can help. Further tweak gamma in NVCP to 0.61 in my case almost eliminate banding.

I have to sacrifice some black crushing. In this test 1 and 2 look same. http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php other test are fine.

To be honest I don't see any different in image quality between full and limited.

But it is annoying that you have to slide gamma or digital vibrance a little and slide back to avoid everything grey out and have to do this everytime when turning on PC / restart / sign out.

Also you have to use Win 10 lastest insider preview. Normal Win 10 will keep color grey out when launching any games.

Some games also don't respect this setting and will keep color grey out like Sims 3 / Grid 2 / Unigine Valley. I have to play all of those in Windows mode.

I also read several hundreds page of S2716DG owners at OCN and many reporting that using AMD card can solve banding issue since AMD card have 10 bit LUT that dilther to 8 bit on S2716DG. But what is the point of AMD + G-Sync monitor lol.

So ultimately banding on S2716DG is causing by.

1.Weak out of box gamma (1.9)
2.No hardware gamma adjust. Have to rely on software.
3.Nvidia Geforce doesn't support dilthering and support only 8 bit LUT.

Ultimate solution. Maybe buy some colorimeter ???

Back to topic I just try brightness 22% in NVCP like you said. Banding is disappear even with dynamic range is set to full. BUT you get terrible black crushing instead in this test http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/black.php all 30 black look same.
Also this 1-4 is black http://www.lagom.nl/lcd-test/contrast.php


Off topic. So jealous about your 5775C @ 4.4Ghz. That monster never available in my country.


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## cucker tarlson (Aug 31, 2017)

Enterprise24 said:


> What is your revision ? Mine is A04 and banding is quiet terrible.
> 
> Changing output dynamic range from full to limited can help. Further tweak gamma in NVCP to 0.61 in my case almost eliminate banding.
> 
> ...


It's massive  

Back to the banding problem. You're spot on that you have to sacrifice black crush to reduce black/grey color banding to absolute minumum, or you can find a healthy balance and live with some banding but avoid black crush, that's what I chose. Going down to 22% with nvcp brightness like I posted yesterday turned out to be way too much and black crush was huge. But now I think I struck a nice balance. Nvcp brightness is set to 37, gamma to 0.69,vibrance to 60. brightness in OSD at 68. Absolutely best looking settings I ever used on this monitor. still some banding but a lot less than before, little to no black crush,very vibrant colors.

And no, you don't have to use sliders every time you start your PC, they should stick once applied, worst case scenario you'll just have to go to nvcp and just click to use nvidia settings, the sliders are always where they were last, locked at the settings you input manually.


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## Enterprise24 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> It's massive



Like I said you must slide gamma or digital vibrance a little and slide it back.


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## cucker tarlson (Aug 31, 2017)

Enterprise24 said:


> Like I said you must slide gamma or digital vibrance a little and slide it back.


to do what ?
seems like your nvcp is freaking out if anything. mine has no bugs.


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## Enterprise24 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> to do what ?
> seems like your nvcp is freaking out if anything. mine has no bugs.



Full range don't have this issue. Only limited range.


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## cucker tarlson (Aug 31, 2017)

limited range doesn't have this issue same way an amputee can't get a sore thumb. like I said, full to limited is a massive difference, it washes out colors. 

I think full range is a must. Then do the tweaks I did or use a good calibrator, and you'll get a pretty good colors for a TN. Certainly better than what most TNs look like. Certainly good enough to make a person who has a calibrated IPS not throw up instantly  Anyway, once I get my hands on a 1080Ti I'll put that 5775c to good use and run the games I play at 120Hz ULMB, colors won't matter much to me then cause as far as gaming goes I always preferred framerate smoothness over color reproduction. I've had many monitors throughout the years and my best piece of advice is not to try to sacrifice one thing for other. There are no one-for-all perfect solutions. Best monitor setup you can ever have is just a separate gaming monitor which has best parametes for gaming, like response time and low blur with no blb and then if you need something for perfect colors just buy a semi-pro IPS with a calibrator.


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## P4-630 (Aug 31, 2017)

My Dell S2417DG seems not to be affected. @puma99dk| ?


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## cucker tarlson (Aug 31, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> My Dell S2417DG seems not to be affected. @puma99dk| ?


you mean you have no banding ?


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## P4-630 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> you mean you have no banding ?



No I don't see it.


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## Enterprise24 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> limited range doesn't have this issue same way an amputee can't get a sore thumb. like I said, full to limited is a massive difference, it washes out colors.
> 
> I think full range is a must. Then do the tweaks I did or use a good calibrator, and you'll get a pretty good colors for a TN. Certainly better than what most TNs look like. Certainly good enough to make a person who has a calibrated IPS not throw up instantly  Anyway, once I get my hands on a 1080Ti I'll put that 5775c to good use and run the games I play at 120Hz ULMB, colors won't matter much to me then cause as far as gaming goes I always preferred framerate smoothness over color reproduction. I've had many monitors throughout the years and my best piece of advice is not to try to sacrifice one thing for other. There are no one-for-all perfect solutions. Best monitor setup you can ever have is just a separate gaming monitor which has best parametes for gaming, like response time and low blur with no blb and then if you need something for perfect colors just buy a semi-pro IPS with a calibrator.



Yeah if banding issue doesn't exist I can't see any different between calibrated S2716DG and my previous Korean Crossover 2763AMG AH-IPS 1440p (panel made by LG). In gaming alone of course since I don't do any photo editing.


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## Enterprise24 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> It's massive
> 
> Back to the banding problem. You're spot on that you have to sacrifice black crush to reduce black/grey color banding to absolute minumum, or you can find a healthy balance and live with some banding but avoid black crush, that's what I chose. Going down to 22% with nvcp brightness like I posted yesterday turned out to be way too much and black crush was huge. But now I think I struck a nice balance. Nvcp brightness is set to 37, gamma to 0.69,vibrance to 60. brightness in OSD at 68. Absolutely best looking settings I ever used on this monitor. still some banding but a lot less than before, little to no black crush,very vibrant colors.
> 
> And no, you don't have to use sliders every time you start your PC, they should stick once applied, worst case scenario you'll just have to go to nvcp and just click to use nvidia settings, the sliders are always where they were last, locked at the settings you input manually.



This setting work well. Banding is minimal. 10 black crush is still acceptable in my opinion. Will try playing some games with this. I don't like saturated color so I leave vibrance at 50. 

I test with this video (start at 0.53).


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## cucker tarlson (Aug 31, 2017)

P4-630 said:


> No I don't see it.


having no banding is near impossible on a TN.


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## P4-630 (Aug 31, 2017)

cucker tarlson said:


> having no banding is near impossible on a TN.



I wait for @puma99dk| , he has the same Dell as me, maybe he can say more about it.


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## puma99dk| (Aug 31, 2017)

It took me personally about 2 weeks or more to get the colours for me right on how I wanted them, looking at youtube videos, reading about custom ICC profiles.

I ended up using this for sometime after I got my monitor:







But I turned it off after sometime and now I am using these settings in the screens menu: Brightness/Contrast to 50/70%, using FPS Game in Preset Modes running 165hz.

Now my screen don't over or under expose colours I dunno never had a screen that needs like a burn-in time before it got to a point where it looks beautiful without much work because in the beginning every preset or setting I used in the screens menu didn't work great sadly to say it for this nice monitor.

Look at my new post....


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## puma99dk| (Sep 1, 2017)

I just double checked now that I am on my PC again I actually uses a mix of 2 ICC profiles to get the screen nice and crisp in colours together with the menu screens.

I have attached both of them if anyone wanna try them out, S2417DG is Dell original from their driver and the S2716DG is a custom one I found online don't remember where exactly (Please keep in mind I use glasses that filter out the blue colours that glow from any monitors so mby this is my it might not look right for u).

Under Device I use the S2417DG ICC Profile:

 

and under Device profile under Advanced I use the S2716DG ICC Profile:


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