Samsung G80SD 32" OLED (Longpost). HDR High Peak Brightness dim fix + Nvidia HDR settings + VRR flicker fix

Hi all

Preface

I have already posted this post, but I found several critical errors in it. I deleted it, corrected the errors, and am ready to share it with you again.
This fix should probably also work on other Samsung QD-OLED Gen3 monitors with Tizen OS, but does not work for models without it (for example, G60SD) because they have a different service menu and do not have these settings (If I'm wrong, please correct me)
UPD The fix definitely works on the new firmware 1300 and the previous one before it

So let's get started

Recently became the owner of this beautiful monitor and fell in love with HDR 1000. And no matter how good this mode is in the dark, it turns daytime scenes into a dull gray mass. I wondered how this can be fixed and get the brightness as with peak brightness off, without loss of detail, peak brightness or color clipping. For 3 weeks, I poked around all possible settings in the monitor menu and in the service menu, I probably reread all the posts on Reddit on this topic, but nothing gave the brightness for daytime scenes that I wanted. And by chance, I accidentally managed to achieve the desired effect.

Examples before and after fix (camera settings locked) Peak Brightness - High.

\Keep in mind that the photos were taken on a regular phone's SDR camera and cannot convey an exact picture. They are only needed to roughly understand the difference in brightness.*

Max white (Windows SDR slider at 100)

HDR Video

SDR Video (with RTX HDR (But it looks just as good without it))

(UPD) Thanks again to u/DespairArdor, there is a way without the service menu that gives the same brightness as after it.

You just need to disable both HDR10+ and Game HDR and enable active tone mapping. However, after this method you will still have the problem with color clipping (at windows at least). Also, the brightness slider in the windows hdr calibration tool is clipped to 690, which may mean that the peak brightness is cut to these values (not sure). If you are not too picky about this, then this is a quick and easy way to increase the overall brightness and save the peaks.

Color clipping in windows after this fix. Contrast 40, color 15

WARNING! This fix requires you to make changes in the service menu. Remember that this may void your warranty.

There are two options - the brightest picture with more color clipping(brightest ~Peak Brightness OFF level), or a little less bright with less clipping(accurate ~Peak Brightness Medium level). Choose to your taste

So, what you need to do:

Turn on HDR in windows (along the way turn off HDR video streaming and Auto HDR (only if you have Nvidia RTX card and you want to use RTX HDR, which is described below))
Go to the monitor settings
Game => Game mode - on
Game => Expert Settings => Make sure that you have HDR For Games off and HDR10+ on in the basic. IMPORTANT! This fix does not work for Game HDR, only for HDR10+ (!UPD Thanks to u/DespairArdor for the tip - you can also turn off HDR10+ and everything will be ok. The main thing is not to turn on Game HDR) (HDR For Games also blocks the genres in the gamebar, which we will need)
General & privacy => Panel Care => Adjust logo Brightness switch to OFF. If this setting is enabled in any mode, the monitor will begin to reduce overall brightness in daytime scenes. This does not happen immediately, but over several minutes. You will notice how the picture has become much dimmer. This does not happen when the setting is disabled.
Go to the Gamebar settings (hold the play/pause button on the remote). Switch the Game Genre to !SPORTS! For now, just turn it on to adjust the colors, I'll explain later what this is for
Go to Image =>
1. Brightness (50) - This setting can be changed if you want to lower the overall brightness of the monitor. It won't break anything, but why would you want to lower the brightness if you're reading a post about increasing it? :)
2. Contrast 40
3. Color -14 (Believe me, it won't make the picture gray in this fix.)
4. Contrast enhancer - Keep it off.
5. HDR Tonal Mapping - ACTIVE - This is one of the main parts of this trick.
6. Gamma ST.2084 (-1 ) - (decrease picture hazieness)
7. Shadow details (-2, -3) - (decrease picture hazieness)
8. Tone - Warm1
9. Color space - At this point you should have the Sports game genre selected in the Gamebar settings. If not, select it and make the picture settings again from 1 to 8 subpoints of upper point.
  1. Go to Colour Space Settings and select Custom
  2. Colour Gamut select BT.2020 - Oddly enough, it is the BT.2020 gamma that brings the picture closer to the real DCI-P3 gamma (Compared with the OnePlus9 picture - 1100 nits HDR in DCI-P3 mode). In the DCI-P3 gamma, which is initially installed in the monitor, the blue color is very much cut off, which is why it seems greenish and dull
  3. Now you have two ways - to get the juiciest color picture without toxic colors or the most accurate one, which is universal for games, sdr and hdr video
  4. If your choice is the most juicy picture - Change Color Space to Native (But leave Color Gammut on BT.2020. This will create smoother color gradients.). This is what we chose the Sports game genre for. Because only in this genre does the green color not become toxically saturated in Native Color Space (I will attach a picture with a frog as an example of toxic green in other genres). (Also, green is normal in the Eco genre, but it is not suitable, because in general it cuts off the luminosity of colors) The colors become as juicy as possible, but, unfortunately, a red tint appears on the faces and it cannot be removed even through the white balance adjustment. Also, sometimes the colors look "neon", which is also pleasing to the eye, but affects accuracy. This mode is good for games, but not for videos
  5. For a more accurate picture, you need to adjust the colors on this screen as follows: 1) (Color Red - Green slider at 76) 2) (Color Blue - Red slider at 60) 3) (Color Cyan - Green slider at 0, Blue slider at 100) 4) (Color Magenta - Green slider at 100)
  6. Personally, I choose a more accurate option for myself. Globally, it differs from the option with Color Space Native only in blue color luminosity (but the excessive saturation of red in Native and the inability to adjust other colors do not allow me to call it the best option). You can customize the colors for the Custom Color Space and switch between it and the Native one to see which option you like best.
Enter the service menu using the service remote control (not the one that comes with the monitor) or via the ColorControl program (I am attaching a link to another post describing how to get to the service menu through it, it also has many other useful features - for example, the ability to automatically turn on / off the monitor when turning on / off the computer) https://www.reddit.com/r/OLED_Gaming/comments/1fy4bho/samsung_g8_g80sd_colorcontrol_setup_for_service/
In the service menu, go to:
1. Control => QD2 Option => change PLC Default Liminance on 70 (This setting should reduce the aggressiveness of the ABL)
2. SVC => OPTION_HDMI => If you want the brightest picture, set ONLY MAX LUX 2 to 138. If you choose a less bright but more accurate picture, then change MAX LUX 1 AND MAX LUX 2 to 138
Turn off the monitor using the remote control.
Turn monitor on
Restart your computer. (This is necessary so that the PC can correctly read new data from the monitor. Neither restarting the video card driver nor switching Windows HDR helps. Only rebooting.) - This was my second mistake from the previous post, because people simply did not see the difference or received an incorrect image without this action.
(UPD) Go to the Windows HDR Calibration application and set the brightness to 1000, not paying attention to the fact that the calibration picture is still visible. If you set the value higher and you, for example, use Windows Auto HDR, then Windows will try to display a value higher than 1000, which will lead to overexposure of the image
~~(UPD2)~~ ~~Go to nvidia control panel and find this screen~~ Removed this part because reducing the green channel makes the image more red. After a few hours of fiddling, I realized it's better to leave it as is. Just move on.

Frog from colors paragraph. Game genre - Sports, Color Space Native

Frog from colors paragraph. Game genre - any except Sports, Color Space Native

Gamebar

The difference in color cliping (same settings)

If you change only MAX LUX 2 - brightest image, more color clipping on green, red and white colors

No clipping if you change both settings (choosed more accurate image). The camera transmits poorly, but in each line you can see the last square at 80%

Now you can test the monitor - watch HDR videos, play HDR games. You can turn active tone mapping on and off and you'll notice that when it's on, you still have all the brightness peaks and details, while the image becomes much brighter).

That's all for the brightness fix. You'll probably want to lower the brightness of your SDR in Windows, because everything will become too bright. I lowered the brightness slider from 70 (before the fix) to 15 after that.

The next part of the post is about Nvidia calibration after our fix.

Convert SDR video to correct HDR: open the Nvidia app and follow the path in the screenshot (I'm not English speaker, regardless of the language, just find the same setting for yourself).

!UPD After a few weeks with the slider at 1000, I came to the conclusion that it is better to leave the slider at 600 (the default). If you set it higher, the peaks will be brighter, but the video starts to feel like it was generated by AI. People's faces get a weird shine. Eyes, teeth, white objects start to glow unnaturally strongly, which looks very strange. At 600 we have enough peaks and do not have the problem of excessive glow.

NV APP HDR VIDEO

Be sure to set the peak brightness exactly to 600 the rest is at your discretion, or you can take my settings. Or took these settings from this post (look for 1000 brigtness settings)(https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/1b03yfg/rtx\_hdr\_paper\_white\_gamma\_reference\_settings/). If you want to customize them for yourself, then launch any SDR video on YouTube and move the sliders. It is important to launch the video, because if the video is paused, you will not see the difference in real time. After setting up, you will get the same experience as from a video with HDR, you will have peak brightness working in the video and it looks super cool. Also, I recommend using this because RTX HDR removes the harsh stair-step transitions between the gradients of the SDR video.

The pre-final part of the post about nvidia game HDR.

I recommend using it instead of the Windows Auto HDR in SDR games, because Nvidia gives you more variability in setting up HDR. Activate Nvidia game HDR in the application. See the screenshot

NV APP GAME HDR

After that you will be able to configure HDR in supported SDR games via nvidia overlay (in game: alt + z => filters => hdr)

The final part of the post about VRR flicker fix.

Solutions:

This fix will not always help and not in all games, but it will save some games (like Uncharted). Disable all programs that create an overlay - MSI Afterburner, FPS Monitor, and any other programs that create an overlay (except for the NVIDIA overlay, it does not create any flickering).
The first method will not help some games, for example, The Last of Us continues to flicker even after turning off. At the same time, even if you turn on DLSS and get 240 frames, the flickering does not go away. The only solution is to lock the FPS at 120 through the NVIDIA panel (not the game FPS, but the monitor FPS) and leave the VRR, then the flickering will disappear (in principle, in any game, even if you have programs with an overlay from the first method enabled
Disable VRR completely. Personally, I don't want to turn off VRR, I like the smoothness of the picture it gives too much.
Enable VRR control in the monitor settings. Eliminates flickering completely, but increases the delay from 3 to 23 ms. For some, this may be completely unnoticeable, but I feel this delay and it pisses me off. That's why I use the first 2 methods.

That's all, I hope this fix will make you happy that you've squeezed the most out of your monitor. But I want to remind you once again that going into the service menu can void your warranty. Don't touch anything there that you don't understand. And I don't know how this will affect the lifespan of the monitor. Do it at your own risk.

P.S. I'm using uncertified HDMI 2.1, win 11, RTX 4090

P.P.S. Once again this fix only works for HDR10+ UPD(or when both modes are off). For Game HDR it does not increase brightness and in general using HDR tonemapping with Game HDR leads to noticeable eagles around bright objects and worse gradients, while HDR10+ does not suffer from this

Madison Howard

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Samsung G80SD 32" OLED (Longpost). HDR High Peak Brightness dim fix + Nvidia HDR settings + VRR flicker fix