Is HDR Good For Gaming? What You Didn’t Know


Introduction

High Dynamic Range (HDR) has been around for a while. Over the years, its evolved and even created trademarked names for itself like Dolby Vision and Expanded Dynamic Range to name a few.

Consoles and PCs alike now utilize this feature and most gaming companies try to render their content with this feature. Most people know this setting essentially improves brightness, contrast, and color ration, but is it really good for gaming?

So is HDR (High Dynamic Range) Good for Gaming?

HDR is a great feature that enhances gaming on TVs and gaming monitors regardless of how good your display hardware is. It improves contrast, brightness, and performance for gaming PCs, PS5s, and XBOX Series X without requiring the gamer to have top-tier hardware because of the special software HDR devices use. Not all games or monitors support HDR, however.

Throughout this article, we’ll cover the following questions: what does HDR gaming do, what are the drawbacks (a must read), if it’s worth it, and product examples.

How HDR Works [Simply Explained]

For reference, Google says our eyes have a contrast ratio of 100:1.

This is the difference between the brightest bright and the darkest dark color of what we’re looking at). This is roughly what a camera contrast has too.

The greater the number is, the better the color contrast looks and the better the quality of the image we’ll see.

Cinema-grade cameras have around 16,000:1 contrast and upwards of 65,000:1 to produce an insanely awesome image quality.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) is created when editors render an image several million times across a wide range of brightness spectrums. Then, the final image is a blend of all the different exposure levels.

This makes the darks look really dark, the brights very bright, and everything in-between pop out, even more, to create a fantastic image without straining your graphics card.

Linus Tech Tips explains it best when he says:

The image is rendered multiple times at varying exposure and brightness levels, then we use software techniques to blend them together. The images becomes more true to life in the shadowy areas of an image and blown up in bright areas to compensate for the original image quality.

Linus Tech Forums
HDR capture from Linus

The rendering technology is also improving rapidly each year in the gaming industry to compensate for some of the drawbacks this effect creates.

You don’t always want to have HDR turned on depending on what type of games you play. Take a look at the next section to see some of the drawbacks of this feature.

The Unfortunate Drawbacks of HDR for Gaming

The following are some of the biggest drawbacks to having an HDR effect:

  • Motion blur looks less natural
  • Sometimes colors pop out too much and look fake
  • TV or monitor color settings contradict the HDR effect of the game being played

Motion Blur Drawbacks

Objects in motion are harder to capture when it comes to color and contrast. This is because the object is flying across the screen- jumping across millions of pixels in the span of a few seconds.

Motion blur HDR from a camera- same effect applies in gaming

Displays can’t always keep up with the insane level of detail HDR tries to achieve when a high demand is placed on every pixel

Over-Contrasted Image Drawbacks

If an image already has a natural vibrant color, like the flowers from a cutscene or a bright sun as a spaceship flies by it in a Star Wars game, then HDR accidentally amplifies the color effect without actually creating an overall image contrast.

HDR and Windows 10 Settings Challenges

This one annoys me the most. Every PC gamer uses Windows 10 or Windows 11, and sometimes it tries to auto-enable HDR and the gaming monitors settings and the graphics card driver settings at the same time.

The effect is a slow, blurry effect that makes you wonder if your gaming rig is even working.

A lot of Frostbite engine games have to have Dolby Vision disabled and then re-activated in Nvidia Driver panel.

For console gamers, PS5s and XBOX products already calibrate these settings for you which I’m jealous of.

Important note: Dolby Vision and HDR (high dyanic range) are the same things. Sony just trademarked this feature for their own brand.

Is HDR on a Gaming PC Worth It?

HDR is still a great option for gamers who play cinematic games such as God of War, The Last of Us, Ghost of Tsushima, Assassin’s Creed, Grand Theft Auto and more. Players who primarily play competitive online shooters should disable HDR in-game and on their displays because it creates excessive motion blur that will cause delayed reactions during a competition.

A few of my close friends are professional Rocket League players and they said they’ll never buy an HDR monitor for a very specific reason.

When I play competitive matches on Call of Duty Warzone, I care more about scoring kills for my team than the graphics. HDR slows me down and strains my eyes because of how fast I’m looking around the screen.

Lucas Lee- amatuer pro Warzone Player

Pro-Tip to get the best HDR settings:

Only game on the “Borderless Fullscreen” setting instead of windowed mode. When you selected Borderless Fullscreen, your Nvidia graphics card drivers auto-optimize your settings to give you great HDR image quality if the game supports it.

Doing this also uses Windows own compositor, V-Sync and triple buffering for free.

An avid gamer on Reddit put this in perspective when he posted the following:

“For me, the only baearable path has been to disable HDR for windows, run the desktop and games in SDR, and enable it in Windows for games such as Shadow of the Tumb Raider if I don’t use my NVidia graphics cards”

— Tyler Durdon, reddit user

The 3 Best Monitors with HDR I Tested

Not all 4k Monitors have the HDR feature. Frankly my ultrawide 75hz gaming monitor doesn’t actually support HDR and I didn’t realize that until I bought it.

The following monitors do have the magic HDR feature, which means they can support any games that come with this feature. Here they are:

LG 24GN600B

LG is one of the leading brands for gaming monitors, especially in the competitive space. For new gamers or for those who don’t play ranked matches but rather slower-paced cinematic games like the Quarry, this would be my recommendation.

It also comes with G-Sync, meaning that it has a variable refresh rate to give you a really good image quality.

Asus TUF Gaming Monitor

A 27 inch monitor with HDR and 1440p resolution is a perfect investment to make early in your gaming experience. It’s a little more on the pricier end but that’s because it has a 165hz refresh rate! Most monitors are only 60 – 144hz.

Important note on this one for console gamers: if you run HDR on the XBOX, your console will force a 60hz refresh rate to achieve true HDR and not ruin all your motion blur.

LG 24QP500

This one won an amazon’s choice for a reason. It achieves an above-average refresh rate (75hz) while giving you the HDR feature and it’s less than $200! That’s a great bang for the buck.

I tried to find some other brand monitors, but LG kept sweeping the competition.

But what if you’re a console or PC gamer that likes to game in the living room? Check out the next section of this article where I show you some of the best HDR TVs that aren’t overly expensive.

The Best HDR Tvs Under $1000

If you’re in need of a better TV or are moving into a new living space, this is a great time to make sure you get an entertainment setup that supports High Dynamic Range (HDR).

Samsung QLED Q60A Series: My Personal Favorite

My living room gaming setup. I can make this TV also display a full borderless if I want.

I’ve had this TV for about a year and a half at the time of writing this article. It does everything you want it to do (because it’s also a smart TV). When I game on my PS4, my console auto detects its HDR feature and I can jump right in to the Ghost of Tsushima with astounding visuals.

It also works great with my gaming PC. Even though I only run a GTX 1070 graphics card, I can still achieve HDR with any game that supports it.

VIZIO V Series UHD

You can get this one for a way more affordable price because of the screen size. This one is 20 inches smaller than the TV I use but it’s great for living room and bedroom setups alike. I also recommend this one if you like smart TVs and also want to sit closer to your setup.

LG OLED C1 Series 48 Inch

I was heavily looking at this tv before I decided to go with Samsun QLED.

LG OLED stands for Organic Light Emitting Diode. This means each pixel display an insanely better true color because they are individually lit and there is no LED backlight around the edges of your TV.

This OLED feature makes the average price of the TV more expensive per screen size, but the color quality combined with HDR is unprecedented.

Related Questions

If you have any more questions, check out these quick answers to help you out.

When Should I turn off HDR for gaming?

If you’re about to play a competitive, online, fast-paced shooter, then turn off HDR. HDR creates a lot of motion blur when objects are moving across the screen and the player is quickly moving their scope from one side of the map to another.

You can turn HDR on in the Windows 10 settings or in the Nvidia or G-Force experience apps that come installed with your graphics cards.

Does HDR reduce Frames Per Second (FPS)?

HDR (High Dynamic Range) on the PS5 and XBOX series will actually reduce your frames per second to 60fps. Due to hardware constraints, console graphics cards can’t provide you high refresh rate and HDR simultaneously. 60FPS with HDR still looks really good, however.

What if my HDR setting makes washed-out or grainy images?

This is caused by an imbalance in your gamma and color settings. Go into your display settings and increase or decrease these two settings. Sometimes you have to also adjust your display’s organic settings to get the HDR effect you want.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, HDR is a great option for gaming. It’s worth becoming familiar with what settings to tweak to give you the best image possible. HDR allows you to have amazing gaming visuals without needing the most expensive hardware to create them.

Thanks for reading! If you have any other questions or comments, feel free to reach out at entertainmentden.ns@gmail.com and I’ll do my best to respond! I’m also taking article suggestions so don’t hesitate to send those over as well. Until then, stay tuned for the next article!

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