Alright folks, I wanted to drop my full HDR setup guide since I’ve seen a ton of people say “HDR looks washed out, SDR is better.” Nah… HDR can look absolutely insane when you set it up right. Most people just never dial it in properly.

Quick background: I do professional filmmaking and color grading, and I’ve been gaming for almost 28 years now—daily. So yeah, I’m pretty obsessive about how my games look.

Here’s my full step-by-step breakdown:

Step 1 – Monitor settings

• Kill any “enhanced sharpening” modes your monitor has, they usually make things worse.
• Stick to sRGB mode in most cases.
• Adjust brightness to taste, but don’t go crazy—use in-game brightness sliders for fine tuning.
• Make sure HDR + VRR are enabled in your monitor’s settings.
• If sharpening is needed, use the game’s built-in sharpening or ReShade, not the monitor.

Step 2 – Windows HDR settings

• Disable Auto HDR (seriously, it’s trash). Only enable real HDR in Windows.
• Calibrate brightness (I find 47 is a good baseline, but it’ll depend on your display).
• Use the Windows HDR Calibration Tool from the MS Store. Only touch brights and darks—leave saturation alone.

Step 3 – NVIDIA app settings
Forget RTX HDR—it’s useless hype. Instead:

• Global settings → G-Sync ON (fullscreen + windowed if supported).
• Display settings → Set native resolution + refresh rate. Test carefully: running highest refresh rate can sometimes break 10-bit HDR if your cable/port can’t handle it.
• Scaling → Just leave it default, no reason to mess here.
• Color settings →
• Use NVIDIA color, not default.
• Desktop color depth: 32-bit
• Output format: RGB
• Output color depth: 10-bit (if supported)
• Output dynamic range: Full

Now the important part—color channels. Don’t just leave it at “All channels.” Adjust r/G/B separately, otherwise you’ll never get proper HDR.

Here’s what I use (tweak to taste):

• All Channels → Brightness 100 | Contrast 119 | Vibrance 83
• Red → Contrast 120 | Vibrance 83
• Green → Contrast 120 | Vibrance 83
• Blue → Contrast 119 | Vibrance 83

HDR instantly stops looking washed out with this. Even on a 400-nit monitor, it looks way better than SDR once calibrated.

Step 4 – Per game tweaks
Some games only work in true fullscreen HDR, some only in borderless. Example:

• Resident Evil Remakes → true fullscreen works best.
• Diablo 2 Resurrected → HDR looks better in windowed (borderless).

Pro tip: you can use the “Windowed HDR Workaround” DLL for games that don’t behave, such as RE Remakes. Pair that with NVIDIA’s per-game DXGI swapchain setting.

Example settings I run for Diablo 2R:

• Monitor Tech → Fixed Refresh
• OpenGL GDI → Prefer Compatible
• Vulkan/OpenGL Present → Prefer layered on DXGI swapchain
• V-Sync → Use app setting

This allows D2R to use HDR correctly in Fullscreen, not just Windowed.

Step 5 – In-game HDR setup
Tweak brightness, contrast, and black levels per game. There’s no universal rule here, test and lock in what feels right.

Step 6 – ReShade (optional but amazing)
For games without good sharpening, I recommend ReShade. My favorite is Simple Realistic for RE4 Remake 2023 by Crubino (works with a bunch of games, not just RE4). It’s lightweight, not bloated, and works really well on top of the NVIDIA color tweaks above.

Step 7 – Frame pacing & latency

• Use MSI Afterburner + RTSS.
• Cap your FPS in RTSS (not in-game, not in NVIDIA app).
• Use Reflex with RTSS frame cap for the smoothest frame pacing + lowest input lag.
• Don’t use V-Sync or “low latency mode” in control panel.

RTSS is hands down the best way to cap FPS—no debate.

And that’s it. Follow these steps and HDR stops looking “washed out” and actually looks like the upgrade it’s supposed to be.

Enjoy your properly tuned HDR 😎