HDR in Doom Eternal is hell, and not in a good way

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An error message indicates AMD is working on a fix, but some Nvidia GPU owners report problems as well.

(Image credit: Bethesda)

Doom Eternal is out, and while it shipped without support for real-time ray tracing, the developers did implement an HDR toggle. The only problem is, HDR appears to be partially busted at the moment.

Over on Reddit, there's a growing thread on the topic. The primary issue is with AMD graphics hardware. Several users report seeing an error message when trying to enable HDR on Radeon GPUs.

"Notice: AMD graphics drivers do not currently support HDR. AMD is actively working to resolve these issues," the message reads.

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(Image credit: id Software)

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"To run the game in HDR display mode on supported monitors and you have an AMD GPU you will need to have the official Doom Eternal release drivers (20.3.1)," Bethesda says.

The Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 Edition 20.3.1 driver release is the latest available driver from AMD, and the first one to offer optimizations specific to Doom Eternal—AMD claims up to a 5 percent better performance at 1080p on Radeon RX 5700 XT hardware.

The release notes also point to a known issue with HDR in general, noting "desktop or in-game corruption may occur intermittently when HDR is enabled." Regardless, multiple people on Reddit claim they are seeing the error message even with the latest driver installed.

"Happens to me with a 5700 XT an the newest optional drivers," one user stated. "Ditto. I submitted a ticket to Bethesda," another user chimed in.

Other users claim to be experiencing HDR-related bugs on Nvidia hardware. While they are not seeing any error messages, there are complaints of the display flickering when turning HDR off and on again, and the map being dim when enabling HDR. One user even said they saw better performance with HDR enabled, which is odd.

Are you experiencing any HDR issues in Doom Eternal? If so, let us know in the comments section.

Paul Lilly
Paul Lilly

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).