Historically, PG games don’t have a great history when it comes to handling HDR (High Dynamic Resolution). This display feature, when it works as intended, should make your games look more vibrant and punchy — provided you’re playing on a HDR-compatible display, of course. Thankfully, there’s an app out there I only semi-recently found out about that handles HDR better than Windows 11’s built-in equivalent.
First released at the turn of the year, NvTrueHDR, which I’ll be calling “RTX HDR” from here on out, is “Nvidia’s AI-powered HDR converter,” according to its Nexus Mods page. It’s entirely free, reasonably easy to use and can make older games that don’t natively support HDR look a good deal better.
I was first alerted to RTX HDR by Alex Battaglia’s excellent Digital Foundry YouTube breakdown back in February, and I’ve been using it ever since. Why? Because it’s simply better at handling High Dynamic Resolution in games than Windows Auto HDR that can be found in System > Display > Use HDR, then scrolling down and enabling the appropriate slider.
While Auto HDR is a reasonably good tool for making some of the older best PC games look more eye-popping, 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, I enable it in modern games that already have an HDR setting baked into their menus.
There is a slight catch, though.
Performance vs pretty
This isn’t an issue that personally affects me because I’m fortunate enough to own a beast of an RTX-4090 gaming PC, but if you’re playing on a less powerful system, you should know that running games using the app’s “Very High” preset can drop frame rate performance by around 5-10%, depending on the title. As for the lower presets, they don’t really cause fps dips from my understanding.
As for how you enable RTX HDR after you download 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 have to do is locate a game’s executable file, drag and drop it into RTX HDR’s window, hit enter, then type in "Very High", "Medium" or "Low" depending on your preset preference.
If you’re planning to use RTX HDR with one of the best Steam games, the executable file for the title you want to enable it in can be found in whatever drive your Steam Library is located on. So assuming you have your Steam games are installed on your main SSD/HDD that’s C:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\, then whatever title you want to add a little extra HDR flair to.
I’ve been using RTX HDR primarily in Rockstar’s epic Red Dead Redemption 2; a game (that despite being an all-time open-world classic), has never had the best HDR mode. With RTX HDR working its magic, though, Arthur Morgan’s wonderful Wild West quest looks especially vibrant on my Samsung Odyssey OLED G9.
So if you own one of the best gaming monitors and want to improve in-game HDR, I highly recommend checking out this awesome app that was created by the vastly talented “emoose”, who then kindly uploaded it to Nexus Mods for PC players all over the globe to enjoy.
And all for the grand price of nada.
More from Tom's Guide
- How to turn on Windows 11 HDR
- I finally bought my first gaming laptop — why the hell did I wait so long?!
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