After reading through existing threads and playing around with HW calibrating my U2413 for the last three days I'd like to share my methodology and results. I was quite new to all this and although there's some great information around from people far more knowledge than me (most of the info below has already been stated by others) it hasn't been exactly a walk in the park :-)
System: Windows 8.1 x64 bit, nVidia GTX 670, U2413 A00
Dell Ultrasharp Color Calibration Solution (DCCS) tool, 1.0.1
Note 1: Initially I had problems getting DCCS to recognise my monitor at all and I blamed Windows 8.1. However, after a fresh installation it worked without a problem. Maybe it was because I first install i1profile and then DCCS - don't do it in this order.
Note 2: After installing DCCS I installed the latest i1Profiler (1.5.0) which would also replace the i1 SDK. I didn't have any problems but I doubt DCSS has been officially certified to use a different SDK.
Note 3: DCCS would crash if I had the monitor's USB 3.0 hub connected to a USB 3.0 port (go figure) USB 2.0 worked fine
Note 4: DCCS would also crash if you factory reset the monitor / change color space profile after it has launched (go figure)
Note 5: DCCS would also fail to find the device occasionally but this is due to the xrite service process mysteriously dying - a PC restart would fix this
My methodology:
1. Dissociate all associated ICC profiles initially and also between runs (I very much hope these are ignored at calibration time, but I wanted to play it safe).
2. Factory reset the monitor (I read DCCS would not clean the LUT data from previous calibrations)
3. Force the i1 SDK to use RG Phosphorus EDR data. This is based on different posts I have read around here and although one would think the EDR is hardcoded in DCCS I decided to play it safe. The guidance I saw said to add a mapping in C:\ProgramData\X-Rite\Dell UltraSharp Color Calibration Solution\displayTechTypes.xml which had to be created as DCCS does not do it:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<DisplayList>
<Display Mfr="AC10" Model="A046" Key="DELF046" Type="18" Name="DELL U2413" Comment=""/>
</DisplayList>
Where: Mfr=AC10 (Dell), Model=A046 (U2413), Key=DELF046 (panel unique ID?), Type=18 (use RG Phosphorus EDR) - n.b. that model and key may differ among variants, but the value can be found in C:\Users\<User_name>\AppData\Roaming\X-Rite\Dell Color Calibration\Logger\Logger.txt when DCSS is first run.
However, I wasn't sure that would be enough since there was an additional entry in that log file: INFO Monitor Type: 8 which meant that the monitor was still being detected as Wide Gamut CCFL. Therefore I went to C:\Program Files (x86)\X-Rite\Devices\i1d3\Calibrations, backed up WGCCFLFamily_07Feb11.edr and then copied RG_Phosphor_Family_25Jul12.edr in its stead.
It very much could be that none of this is needed though and if it is Dell need to fire whoever is in charge of software QA ;-)
4. Start DCSS. Initially I was using Custom mode, but then figured the target white point is D65 anyway, and for sRGB there isn't a way to specify sRGB gamma (which hopefully is the case using the sRGB preset, but maybe I'm just wishfully thinking here). Anyway, I didn't have a need to use Custom so eventually i reverted to using the presets. Note that DCCS does change your current CAL profile number on launch so make sure the right one is selected in the OSD before you click Start.
Personally I calibrated CAL1 to Native and CAL2 to sRGB.
Afterwards I used dispcalGUI and Argyll to verify the profiles. A mistake I did a few times was that although I imported the RG Phosphorus EDR data I didn't select it under 'Correction' so my reds had a huge error ;-) Also, dispcalGUI loads the OS default ICC so I had to switch them manually before starting it.
Anyway, here are the results I got:
Native: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28406605/native.html
sRGB: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28406605/srgb.html
(Ignore the luminescence, I have to still figure out which one works for me - I find 120 a tad too low)
The results look good to me and so does the onscreen result! One thing to note: calibrating native 3 times with the Native preset resulted in white point delta of 11 due to R/G imbalance. I went for custom using the EDID RGB/white point coordinates and now white point delta is 0.45! So I'd avoid the preset personally.
Hope this is useful and if you have any tips let me know.
