Precision 7510 - Auto Screen Brightness Drives Me Nuts

Hi guys,

I've got my new 7510 a few days back and installed the latest Windows 10 Pro on it. Installed the Dell drivers from Dell's website. All seemed good up to this point.

I have one issue that drives me literally nuts. I spent last 2 days browsing the web trying to find a solution. On Monday I will be contacting Dell and if there's no solution, I will be sending the laptop back. Enough with the drama, here's the problem:

When on battery, the laptop adjust the screen brightness according to what's open. Dark desktop - it goes a shade darker. New white browser window and it goes brighter. It doesn't happen smooth like in my old Macbook Pro. It is literally a split second delay step or down. My 2010 Macbook Pro had (can't remember exactly) but say, 20 steps of brightness. 2016 Precision 7510 has 10. So it's very noticeable when the brightness changes, let alone when it's doing it at its own accord.

Now I learned that this could be a 'feature' by Intel called Display Power Saving Technology. There's a workaround on the internet. You change a FeatureTestControl key in Registry and it disables this auto brightness depending on screen context on the spot.

The problem I have? FeatureTestControl is not part of my Registry. The key doesn't exist where it should be, neither does it anywhere in the Registry.

So there must be another way of disabling this counter productive 'feature'. Anyone know how? Like I said, it's not the brightness that you adjust manually with keyboard (that works), it's the automatic brightness that changes based on what's displayed on the screen.

Thanks.

 

If you have graphics switching turned on in the BIOS, go to the Intel HD Graphics control panel, power settings, "On battery", and turn off "Power Saving Technology."

If you have graphics switching turned off, congratulations, you've found this issue ---http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ion-m4700-m6700-m4800-m6800-7510-7710.794235/
Let me know if you solve it.

 

Aaron,

Thanks for your reply. You're right, the switching graphics was disabled in the BIOS. I enabled it and voila, the issue I had been battling was gone! So it's limited to the dedicated graphics card.

The card in my 7510 is an ATI, not Nvidia. I will keep an eye on the screen for a few days (no pun intended) and advise here if the problem has been resolved.

For now though, I'll go enjoy a steady picture on my screen.

Thanks Aaron. All this aggravation and I didn't even think to check the switching graphics option...

 

I don't have a 7510 (yet), but I've had this problem on my ThinkPad W520 (Nvidia Quadro 2000m), my Surface Book (Nvidia ???), and my Surface Pro 4 (Intel HD Graphics only!). To be clear, the issue seems to be some kind of dynamic contrast, not actual backlight brightness. When switching from a bright program to a dark program (e.g. white webpage -> Visual Studio with dark theme), the screen gets even darker, making the dark program hard to see. For me, the text in Visual Studio would get so "dim" that it would be almost impossible to read.

For me, the issue turned out to be with Intel's drivers. There's a dynamic contrast feature that cannot be disabled from the Intel HD Graphics Control Panel app. Thankfully, someone wrote this "Surface Tweak Tool" which includes an "Intel Integrated Graphics fix" which solves this issue on all my devices. Check it out:
http://www.nvgpupro.com/surfacetweaktool/
http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/surface-tweak-tool-for-surface-pro-2-release.821

Hope this works for you too. Just remember that you need to reapply the fix every time you do a windows update (and probably driver updates too).

 

Any idea what the lack of colors fix does? Is there a way to only turn off the dynamic contrast?

 

If you turn off switchable graphics and are using just the dedicated card, there is an option in the AMD control panel under power settings or something to that effect for this as well. Right click the desktop, click the AMD Advanced settings option and then poke around. There's a screen for power management and this is the only option on that screen I believe.