How do I turn off temporal dithering in an AMD graphics card?

Follow the instructions below to disable temporal dithering in an AMD GPU installed in your host PC/workstation, or a computer with a PCoIP Remote Workstation Card (host card) installed.

If temporal dithering is enabled on a machine using PCoIP, it may result in poor performance and high bandwidth usage  even when the display is seemingly static. For more information, see Graphics card temporal dithering impact on a PCoIP Remote Workstation card

To disable temporal dithering by editing the registry in Windows based drivers

1. Open the AMD Catalyst Control Center from the host PC/workstation. To do this, right-click somewhere on the desktop and it's the first option in the context menu. 

2. Click Preferences and then enable the Advanced View setting.

3. In the navigation menu, click on Information to expand it.

4. Click on Software.

5. From Information > Software, locate and note the 2D Driver File Path, which should look similar to this:

   /REGISTRY/MACHINE/SYSTEM/ControlSet001/Control/Class/ **{YOUR GUID}/ 0000**

6. Next, launch the Windows Registry Editor by left clicking the Start button, typing in regedit, and hitting enter.

7. Browse to the registry key location using the 2D Driver File Path. Note:

   • In the example above, MACHINE refers to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE folder.
   • Substitute the green text with what you found after following steps 1-5.

8. Inside the target registry key, do the following depending on which port connections you use: 

   • to disable dithering on display port connections, create a new 32-bit DWORD registry value called "DP_DisableDither" and set it to 1.
   • to disable dithering on DVI connections, create a new 32-bit DWORD registry value called "TMDS_DisableDither" and set it to 1.

   Note that for this particular key, the value of 1 means that it will disable the option. Without the key or with the key set to a value of 0, dithering will be enabled.

9. Restart the workstation. Dithering is now disabled.

To disable dithering using the aticonfig tool (which simplifies X config file editing) in Linux based drivers:

1. Switch to runlevel 3 using telinit 3 command.

2. Run the following as Root:

   aticonfig --set-pcs-val=MCIL,DP_DisableDither,1

   Note that if this command doesn't turn off dithering, you might disable dithering using this command instead:

   aticonfig --set-pcs-val=TMDS_DisableDither,1

   For additional information about the aticonfig command, refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMD_Catalyst.

3. When you're done, save your changes.

4. Switch back to runlevel 5 (using telinit 5 command).

To disable dithering by enabling support for 10-bit monitors:

You can also turn off dithering using the following workaround. AMD's graphics cards support 10-bit monitors. 10-bit monitors are designed to provide a smoother gradient without resorting to techniques like dithering, so dithering is disabled by default. AMD's 10-bit feature can be enabled by checking the "Enable 10-bit pixel format support" checkbox in Catalyst Control Center > AMD FirePro > AMD FirePro Settings (or under Graphics Setting > Workstation> Settings). Restart the workstation. Dithering is now disabled.