HDR10+ GAMING FAQs

Regular HDR gaming has to pick default HDR values, which may not work well for your gaming display. The game developer does their best to determine how the image should be rendered by default, but they must make their game look acceptable on a wide range of displays so they have to make compromises. As a result, if your display is significantly brighter or dimmer than the target brightness settings decided by the developer, the game may not look as intended.

HDR10+ GAMING adds real-time, two-way communication. The game engine learns the exact capabilities of your display, such as its peak brightness, and renders the image precisely for that screen. It works on the game engine, through the GPU and automatically switches the display into HDR10+ GAMING mode, allowing the display to present the image exactly as it is received.

In plain terms:

Standard HDR10: Game developers make a best guess on default settings. Results vary wildly.

HDR10+ GAMING: Your game engine knows your display’s exact specs and renders accordingly. Then tells your display to go into HDR10+ GAMING mode. What you see matches the developer’s vision.

Most HDR gaming today is unoptimized by default. Monitors and games do not speak the same language, leading to blown-out whites, crushed blacks, and an image that looks nothing like the developer intended. To get the best image quality, players need to manually adjust settings, which can be time-consuming and inconsistent. You then spend time adjusting picture settings, with brightness sliders that may or may not do anything useful.

HDR10+ GAMING fixes this issue automatically.

As a gamer, you get “out of the box” premium HDR visual experience, with precise contrast, brightness, and colors.

No. This is one of the most persistent misconceptions about the standard. HDR10+ GAMING is an open, royalty-free industry standard managed by HDR10+ Technologies LLC, a multi-company organization. Samsung is a founding member, alongside Panasonic and 20th Century FOX, but the standard is open for any manufacturer, game studio, or GPU maker to adopt.

As of 2026:

• Over 180 companies have formally joined HDR10+ Technologies LLC
• More than 7,000 certified products are using the HDR10+ GAMING mark worldwide
• Certified displays include Samsung, Hisense, Amazon, Prism+, Haier TVs and Samsung monitors.
• GPU support from NVIDIA and Intel

See the full adopter list at hdr10plus.org/adopters.

As of June 2026, HDR10+ GAMING is only available on PCs with NVIDIA and Intel GPU support. However, the standard is designed to be platform-agnostic. HDR10+ GAMING can be fully supported on consoles and handheld/docked devices.

We expect the ecosystem to expand. Watch hdr10plus.org for announcements as new platforms are confirmed.

HDR10+ GAMING requires four things:

• A certified display (TV or monitor) — check full list of displays
• A compatible game — check full list of compatible games
• A certified GPU (NVIDIA or Intel) with up-to-date drivers — check GPU compatibility
• HDR enabled in Windows 10/11 display settings, with your PC connected to your display via HDMI

This is a one-time setup process. Once all four conditions are met, HDR10+ GAMING activates automatically each time you launch a supported game.

No. HDR10+ GAMING is not limited to HDMI by design — the specification supports any digital display interface, including HDMI, DisplayPort, and cloud-gaming APIs. Today’s HDMI-only experience is a current limitation of GPU support, not of the standard itself.

Certified HDR10+ GAMING TVs are available from multiple manufacturers, including Samsung, Hisense, Amazon, Prism+, and Haier TVs, plus a growing list of certified PC monitors. All certified products have passed HDR10+ GAMING certification testing, which means they correctly communicate their display characteristics to the game engine and the GPU properly flags the HDR10+ GAMING signal to the display.

Browse and filter the complete list at hdr10plus.org/certified-products and select ‘Gaming’ to see HDR10+ GAMING-specific displays.

No. The HDR10+ GAMING specification is open for 10-bit color or higher — it is not capped at 10-bit. 10-bit already reproduces over 1 billion shades, more than the human eye can distinguish in a single image and more than any current consumer gaming display can physically reproduce. Every certified HDR10+ GAMING display today uses a 10-bit panel, so there’s no practical difference in what appears on screen. The “12-bit” figure sometimes cited in marketing refers to a theoretical maximum that isn’t used by gaming displays today. The specification is not limited to 10-bit.

Washed-out colors and gray blacks are symptoms of a misconfiguration, not a flaw in the standard. The three most common causes are:

• Double tone-mapping: With HDR10+ GAMING, the game engine performs all tone mapping on the GPU, optimized for your display. Your display should simply show what it receives. If your display is also applying its own tone mapping, the image gets processed twice and looks flat. This can be fixed by ensuring the display is in HDR10+ GAMING mode.
• Windows HDR settings: The ‘SDR content brightness’ slider in Windows affects non-HDR content only. For HDR10+ GAMING, make sure your Windows HDR is enabled and ensure your display’s Game Mode is on. Follow the setup steps found in Question 5.
• Display not in Game Mode: First, check is your display is HDR10+ GAMING certified. If not, some displays apply additional video processing outside of Game Mode, which conflicts with the Game engine-rendered signal. Switch to Game Mode so the display renders the HDR10+ GAMING signal as intended.

No. HDR10+ GAMING does not introduce brightness flickering. It outputs the game rendering exactly as received from the game engine for your specific display. It is compatible with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) and Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM), so it is fully suited to fast-paced and competitive gameplay.

No. HDR10+ GAMING does not add any extra display processing latency. All tone mapping happens on the game engine. Your display receives the final signal and shows it without additional processing, which is why HDR10+ GAMING is fully compatible with Game Mode and VRR on supported displays.

As of May 2026, 15 games support HDR10+ GAMING. The library is growing steadily and includes major titles across multiple genres:

• Open-World Action-RPG / Adventure: Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead Redemption 2, Crimson Desert
• FPS: Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Battlefield 6, Hell Is Us, The First, Lost Rift
• RPG: Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Borderlands 4
• Racing/Sports: F1 25
• Puzzle/Narrative: Causal Loop

New titles are being added regularly. See the live list at hdr10plus.org/games.

No, HDR10+ GAMING actually protects the artistic vision.

In standard HDR, the display applies its own additional image processing on top of whatever the developer intended. This can lead to a scene designed for a specific display brightness appearing completely different on various TV, often brighter, less saturated, and ‘processed’ in a way the developer did not approve.

With HDR10+ GAMING, tone mapping is done at the game engine with full knowledge of the connected display’s capabilities. The display then shows the signal as received. The developer gets a predictable, accurate result on every certified display.

Implementation was designed to be a straightforward process. Key developer resources include:

• Unreal Engine 5 plug-in: Available since UE 5.2.1 (October 2023) and updated to the most recent UE version on com. Enables Source Side Tone Mapping with minimal code changes for studios that already have an HDR pipeline using Unreal Engine.
• GPU APIs: NVIDIA and Intel have built HDR10+ GAMING protocols directly into their APIs, so studios can integrate without building custom pipelines from scratch using their proprietary game engine.
• Certification support: HDR10+ Technologies LLC provides test suites, documentation, and technical support through the adopter program.
• Game developer documentation: org/developer-documentation

HDR10+ GAMING’s implementation model allows studios to develop and test against a single specification, ensuring their game performs as intended across all certified displays.

Here’s how to confirm it’s running:

• Display mode change: When you launch a supported game, your display should automatically switch to its HDR10+ GAMING mode. Depending on your TV or monitor’s interface, the picture mode label will change or show the HDR10+ GAMING logo on screen or in menus.
• In-game indicator: Some games include an HDR, HDR10 or HDR10+ GAMING indicator in their Display Settings menu.

If the mode doesn’t activate, confirm your HDMI cable is connected (not DisplayPort), HDR is enabled in Windows, and your display is set to accept an HDR signal on that port.

This is intentional and expected behavior. The manual brightness slider is designed for standard HDR mode, where you have to calibrate manually. When HDR10+ GAMING is active, the slider is set automatically, and game developers may choose to disable it.

Yes. HDR10+ GAMING is explicitly designed to coexist with Variable Refresh Rate technologies, including NVIDIA G-Sync Compatible, and on displays that support VRR.

Display variation is a reality of the hardware, not a flaw in the standard. Different panels have different peak brightness levels, black levels, and color gamut. This means that a 3,000-nit OLED and a 600-nit IPS monitor will always look different, regardless of which HDR standard is used.

What HDR10+ GAMING certification guarantees is that every certified display correctly communicates its capabilities to the game engine and renders the resulting signal accurately. The game adapts to what your display can show, so you always get the best HDR your screen is physically capable of.

HDR10+ Technologies LLC operates a certification program. Every display with the HDR10+ GAMING logo must pass tests for color accuracy, brightness handling, and protocol compliance.

HDR10+ GAMING is royalty-free and open, which means adoption is driven by hardware quality rather than commercial agreements. More than 7,000 products have passed certification. The result is a large, quality-verified ecosystem that any manufacturer or developer can participate in without paying per-device fees.

HDR10+ Adaptive is an additional feature for compatible displays that adjusts HDR brightness based on the ambient light in your room. It was released as part of the HDR10+ ADVANCED specification in 2025 for gaming.

• Displays with ambient light sensors can use HDR10+ Adaptive to brighten images in daylit rooms and deepen contrast in dark environments.
• HDR10+ GAMING works fully and correctly on displays without Adaptive sensors
• On displays that support both, the base tone mapping is done by the game engine (HDR10+ GAMING), and HDR10+ Adaptive applies a further adjustment based on room light level.

Yes. HDR10+ ADVANCED includes Adaptive Cloud Gaming that uses real-time ambient light data and dynamic tone mapping to optimize visibility and immersion with cloud-based games, using compatible HDR10+ GAMING platforms. HDR10+ ADVANCED is the 2025 specification that introduced the Adaptive features for gaming.