XPS 15-9570, color banding issue

Just created an account to provide some input for this issue as it has plagued me for months now. I have the XPS-15 9570 with the i9, 4K touchscreen, and GTX 1050. I have the latest bios, latest graphics drivers for intel and nvidia, and latest version of windows as of my posting this. This has been a problem for me across the last 3 versions of the bios. I have rolled back my drivers, my bios, reinstalled one by one, etc. etc. and nothing has resulted in a permanent fix.

At least in my case it seems to be conflict between the intel drivers and the nvidia drivers. If I uninstall the intel driver, the issue disappears, but I lose brightness functionality. If I uninstall the nvidia drivers, the issue disappears, but I lose graphics card functionality.

I do not have a solution, but I have found a tedious and annoying workaround. If you open the "Intel Graphics Control Panel" program, select "Display" at the bottom, select "Color Settings" on the left, and then reduce the slider under "Color Gamut" all the way down to "Natural Colors" and then back up to "Vivid Colors" again and apply settings, it will temporarily eliminate the problem until you shut your screen off again. This is obviously quite annoying, but it has basically become a habit of being the first thing I do after turning on my computer.

Hopefully this helps narrow down the issue for the pros out there. Or at least provides a temporary workaround for those trying to just get some damn photo editing done.

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for trying the suggested step.

I appreciate your time and patience. Could you share the images of the issue that you are facing with for me to review and also, we can try disabling the Color Accuracy in Intel Graphics Control Panel.

Open the Intel graphics control panel and choose color settings and at the bottom choose disable under color accuracy and save changes and see if that helps.

Regards,

Dell-GopalD

Have you observed this issue is any other basic application like your browser or on the desktop screen?

Please turn off the computer, start the computer by holding down the D key to initiate the LCD BIST. Check if there is a banding issue noticed on this screen.

For my reference, please click on the message tab next to your avatar– click “New Message” & search for my Dell username (Dell-Sreejith R) & send a private message with the service tag, registered name & email address.

How to find the service tag

Hi Dell-SreejithR

Sorry guys, but you must be kidding, right?

1st. I told in the previous message "Here's the picture from my desktop background" which is obviously affected by the issue, as you can see. Why are you asking this again?

2nd. LCD BIST shows colors without any gradient - what kind of possible banding you expect to see there? Maybe you expecting some screen/hardware issues, but again, as I said in one of my previous posts, the issue was not there in BIOS 1.5, so this option should be excluded in the first place.

I have a very simple question - why don't you just install, let's say lightroom on one of XPSes with latest software, open some picture there and see the issue yourself. If you need pictures to use as example, I can send you some - you may compare how those pictures look on MAC and XPS with latest software to see clear difference. The serious solution from your side would be to check and test many possible image-related software, understand that issue is there, fix it and provide clear workaround/solution/settings (bios, intel-graphics,nvidia, colors profile, whatever) which will provide correct and consistend images look accross all the applications.

Sorry if I sound a bit angry, but all this is really weird - you can just google "XPS banding issue" to see that many people is affected by this and nothing is being done for a long time.

P.S. Why are you always ask to send you a direct message if many people may be interested how to solve the issue?

I understand what you are calling out. The desktop image is blurry, we are not able to confirm the issue there.

The test was to ensure that there is no hardware as you mentioned & this is part of the diagnostics.

Our assistance on 3rd party applications is limited unless the system a software warranty.

We will need the system service tag to check the entitlements.

We always recommend sharing the system details on a private message for security reasons.

The image is blurry, but you may clearly see greenish squares and horizontal lines which are there.

What do you mean 3rd party application?  Windows itself is a 3rd party application from Dell standpoint, right?
You only take care of those colors in that colors diagonstics tests on system start?)))

I may say it different way, so not to refer to "3rd party applications". If you open .tiff images, in all the application I tested, it has this bad effect. Plus to that images are not consistend among applications and system. Windows viewer makes it more contrast and reddish compared to apps like Lightroom/Photoshop and windows bacgkround itself. And I just want to emphasize it once more - in BIOS 1.5 there was all fine and consistend throught the system and all the applications. This should exclude all the possible hardware issues.

The problem is that you never emulate conditions yourself so to make sure if that the problem exists. This is really sad. Simplest thing you can do is just have two XPS laptops - one with BIOS 1.5 and one with the new one and check what and how is different there.

Service tag I will send you in direct.

The OS installed will be a Dell tweaked version.

Could you share a picture of an image in Windows Viewer?

We will wait for the tag details.

Here are two images:

1st - windows image viewer. If you carefully check topright dark corner, you will see inacceptable gradients there. On other PCs or mobile areas like this are smooth and clean. 

2nd - same image in LIghtroom. Same gradients there but also different color and contrast.

Just to exclude possible assumptions about image quality -  the resolution is 2842x3754. 

Thank you.

Thank you for the detailed information. Please share the system tag details to proceed further.

Shared in personal message. Please post your reply here in the thread.

Thank you.

Hi Andrew,

Due to technical issue we are unable to view the pictures posted on the thread and so would request you to share it via email at sos@dell.com. We will have it reviewed and further assist you.

Also, we would like to keep this conversation prive due to security reasons as it might involve personal information.

Shared via email yesterday and sent you a private message regarding it.

Looking forward to your reply.

Thank you for the details. I am afraid, we are not able to a major difference in the images shared, just that the 2nd image a slight brightness variation.

I am afraid, our assistance on this is limited & since the system has a basic warranty, we do not have an option to engage the pro support on this case.

This is actually rediculous and sad.

Even if you don't see the difference, you should see that gradients are awful, having greenish colors, etc. It is clearly seen on both images. As for other things - one image is more "reddish" than the other and yes, as you said, one is a bit brighter in shadows.

Probably you don't get it, but this issue makes the laptop virtually useless - it is not possible to do any postprocessing with photos because colors and lights/darks are wrong and those gradients present.

I really don't unserstand how it is was possible to buy this (not cheapest) laptop just to spend so many hours trying to fix the this color/gradients issues and having no usefull technical support from the vendor. It is also sad that you're just ignoring similar requests of other people.

This is totally dissappointing - such a good screen and no skills/knowledge/will from you to make it work properly.

So it seems that the only option to use the laptop for some more time - is to install some year-old software/bios/etc which brings image quality back to normal. Though it would be great if I could just send this device back to Dell.

Anyways, thank you for your time and "limided assistance"