Historically, PG games don’t have a great tradition when it comes to handling HDR (High Dynamic Resolution). This display feature, if it works as intended, should make your games look more vibrant and punchy – assuming you’re playing on an HDR-compatible display, of course. Thankfully, there’s an app I only recently learned about that handles HDR better than Windows11The built-in equivalent of .
First published at the turn of the year, NvTrueHDRwhich I will now call “RTX HDR”, is according to its Nexus Mods Page. It’s completely free, relatively easy to use, and can make older games that don’t natively support HDR look significantly better.
I was first introduced to RTX HDR in February by Alex Battaglia’s excellent Digital Foundry YouTube review and have been using it ever since. Why? Because it’s simply better at handling High Dynamic Resolution in games than Windows Auto HDR, which is System > Display > Use HDRthen scroll down and activate the corresponding slider.
While Auto HDR is a pretty good tool for making some of the best older PC games look even more spectacular, RTX HDR is simply better. It boosts in-game vibrancy more effectively than the official Windows alternative, and this driver-level software is so good that I enable it in modern games that already have an HDR setting in their menus.
However, there is a small catch.
Performance vs. Beauty
This issue doesn’t affect me personally as I’m lucky enough to own an RTX 4090 gaming PC, but if you’re playing on a less powerful system, you should know that running games on the app’s Very High preset can lower the frame rate by around 5-10% depending on the title. As for the lower presets, they don’t really cause any FPS drops as far as I know.
And how do you enable RTX HDR once you’ve downloaded the software? Thankfully, it’s a pretty simple process. Once you have the app on your system – and I suggest you create a desktop shortcut for easy access – all you need to do is find a game’s executable, drag and drop it into RTX HDR’s window, hit Enter, and then type “Very High,” “Medium,” or “Low,” depending on your preferences.
If you use RTX HDR with one of the following best steam gamesthe executable file for the title you want to enable it in can be found on the drive where your Steam library is located. Assuming you have your Steam games installed on your main SSD/HDD, this is C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\, then to any title you want to add a little extra HDR flair to.
I have used RTX HDR mainly in Rockstar’s epic Red Dead Redemption 2; a game (which, despite being an all-time open-world classic), has never had the best HDR mode. However, with RTX HDR, Arthur Morgan’s wonderful Wild West adventure looks particularly vivid on my Samsung OLED G9.
So if you own one of the best gaming monitors and want to improve the HDR in the game, I highly recommend you check out this fantastic app created by the extremely talented “Elk“, who then kindly uploaded it to Nexus Mods for PC gamers around the world to enjoy.
And all this for the proud price of nada.
