Colour banding in and outside video playback

[nddcndndd]

Hi, after getting a new desktop computer I noticed a bit more colour banding than before, using the old monitor from my previous build. My monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster 941mp @ 75 Hz and has only Analog VGA. My video is integrated Intel HD 2500 from my CPU Ivy Bridge i5 3470. The colour banding is more noticeable in darker tones and it is prominent in video playback and in some places in games or menus. My old PC had Windows XP 32bit (SP3) the new one is on Windows 8 64bit.


After playing with the monitor settings I think it’s not from that. My video driver settings are all on default except for Saturation which is at 10 rather than default 0. I’m using saturation the same way I used digital vibrance on my nVidia drivers before to make the colours more vivid. The colour banding is less prominent when saturation is on default 0 but still there.


Visually the picture I get is the same as on my old PC which had Geforce 8400GS but with more prominent colour banding.

Do you guys and gals have any suggestions how to remedy it or why it is that way? Is it from the settings, or the monitor, or the hardware graphics?

[nddcndndd]

Here is a screenshot to show what I mean. It's of the Music app in Windows 8 and shows the color banding in dark colors. If you don't see them they look like a progression of lighter and darker horizontal lines.

[jagabo]

It may just be a matter of what colors you are/were using. The images show a smooth gradient (in the dark grey area for example) from RGB 63,62,68 at the top to 45,44,49 at the bottom. Those slightly off-grey colors will result in banding as individual RGB components change one or two at a time going down the screen. The banding would be much less visible if pure shades of grey were used, like 62,62,62 to 44,44,44.

[nddcndndd]

I got a dedicated video card (Palit nVidia GTX650 Ti Boost) and that significantly reduced the color banding. It seems in the Intel HD 2500 it was a bit more prominent and me cranking up the saturation setting on it to get more vivid colors made it even more prominent. It seems using the saturation setting in the Intel driver is not exactly the same as using the Digital Vibrance setting from the nVidia driver