Vanishing 10 bit colour

captainfearless · Saturday at 5:20 AM

Recently I upgraded my media PC with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 graphics card. whilst setting it up I ran into a problem where it was only outputting 8 bit colour and the solution was that the HDMI socket on my Sony dn1080 avr did not support it so I swapped it to CD input and immediately 10 bit and 12 bit cameavailable. However the other day I noticed my desktop resolution had reverted to 1080 from 4K and that 10 bit was no longer available in Nvidia control panel. I determined that the reason was that the HDMI socket on the Sonyhad switched itself from enhanced mode to standard mode thus 4K was no longer the native resolution. hooray I thought I don’t know why this has happened but at least I found the answer so I switched it back and native 4K resolution was restored. My problem is that still only eight bit colour is available whether I select RGB or ycbcr. Very puzzled.

spapakons · Saturday at 5:37 AM

You normally change 8-bit to 10-bit color from nVidia Control Panel. Have you tried there at the display resolution section? You may have to set it from auto to manual to allow you change the settings.

captainfearless · Saturday at 8:58 AM

Wonder if it’s because control panel is being phased out in favour of the app?

bobkn · Saturday at 10:08 AM

captainfearless said:
Wonder if it’s because control panel is being phased out in favour of the app?

I doubt that.

I continue to use the control panel (only), and haven't seen anything like that.

But I use a DisplayPort connection, directly to the monitor. No HDMI, no AVR.

spapakons · Saturday at 2:30 PM

I read that new installation of nVidia drivers will not include the nVidia Control Panel, but if you already have it and upgrade the drivers it will be available, it's not uninstalled. For those with new installation that want it, they can download it separately from Microsoft Store. So it is still available but not along with the drivers. It is a separate download and it will not be updated, it will be the same version, so you install it once and then only upgrade the drivers.

Go to nVidia Control Panel, Display section, resolution section. Select your monitor (if more than one) and switch from auto to manual. Now you should be able to select the refresh rate, the color model (RGB or YCbCr), full or limited (for YCbCr only) and the color pixel depth, 8-bit, 10-bit or 12-bit. Not all color pixel depth are available on both HDMI and Display Port, it depends on your output ports, the monitor inputs and the cable type. This works only for Display Port or HDMI connections. Needless to say that you must first make sure your TV input is set to Deep Color or whatever is called to support 10-bit or 12-bit.

captainfearless · Sunday at 3:38 AM

thanks for the kind reply. Am I missing something? There is no auto/manual switch?

spapakons · Sunday at 3:58 AM

Change 8bpc to 10bpc or 12bpc. This stands for bits per channel. Aka 8-bit or 256 shades per color channel. 10-bit or 1024 shades per color channel. 12-bit or 4096 shades per color channel. Last one is 16bpc or 16-bit or 16384 shades per color channel. Not available for display yet, it is used in photo and video editing. Also have in mind that RGB is always full, aka 4:4:4 and looks better than YCbCr which is usually limited aka 4:2:2 or 4:2:0

8bpc is 24-bit total or 32-bit including the alpha channel aka 16 million colors. That's the 32-bit desktop color you see in the screenshot. 10bpc is 30-bit total (no alpha channel) aka 4 billion colors. 12bpc is 36-bit total and 16bpc is 48-bit total.

captainfearless · Sunday at 6:29 AM

That doesn’t explain why I have no auto/manual button!

spapakons · Sunday at 8:24 AM

Have another look at your screenshot. The "auto" is "Use default color settings" and the "manual" is "Use nVidia color settings". Sorry if I wasn't clear. I was posting from my mobile phone and didn't remember the exact wording.

captainfearless · Sunday at 10:24 AM

Ah, my bad, sorry, I’m already on manual then.

captainfearless · Monday at 12:03 PM

Update, I used DDU to uninstall my driver and I installed Nvidia app and the latest drivers. I connected my TV directly to my PC taking the AVR out of the loop and fully powered down the TV in the PC and disconnected all the HDMI cables after all this I can still only get 8 bit colour depth. I don’t understand how switching the ports on my DN 1080 instantly worked before and now it no longer does. Everything seems to be set up correctly and I’m a loss as taught to do next really any help gratefully appreciated! This is really bugging me now!

bobkn · Monday at 1:22 PM

This is a semi-random suggestion:

If you can connect the monitor to the PC using a DP cable rather than HDMI, it may be worth a try.

spapakons · Monday at 4:23 PM

captainfearless said:
Update, I used DDU to uninstall my driver and I installed Nvidia app and the latest drivers. I connected my TV directly to my PC taking the AVR out of the loop and fully powered down the TV in the PC and disconnected all the HDMI cables after all this I can still only get 8 bit colour depth. I don’t understand how switching the ports on my DN 1080 instantly worked before and now it no longer does. Everything seems to be set up correctly and I’m a loss as taught to do next really any help gratefully appreciated! This is really bugging me now!

Maybe the input of the TV is not properly configured. Make sure you have enabled Deep Color or whatever is called from the TV settings before you connect the PC. Also if the PC cannot properly detect the TV as 10-bit or 12-bit capable, maybe you have to force this setting from nVidia Control Panel, as described before.

This is what I get for my HDMI output. If you are using Display Port there might not all options be available. I might be wrong, but some TVs support only 12bpc, not 10bpc or vice versa. Also DP might support only one of them, not both. Last guess, some TV might restrict Deep Color or whatever is called to HDMI1, not all HDMI inputs. My advice is to find the appropriate input, make sure Deep Color is enabled from the TV settings, and then connect your PC and see what happens. Correct the settings manually (aka Use nVidia Color settings) as shown below: If your TV can handle it, prefer Full RGB or YCbCr 4:4:4 (full). These two look the best over the limited 4:2:2 or 4:2:0. Try both RGB and YCbCr, but I find RGB has more vivid colors and I think they are better.

bobkn · Monday at 10:39 PM

bobkn said:
This is a semi-random suggestion:

If you can connect the monitor to the PC using a DP cable rather than HDMI, it may be worth a try.

To reply to myself: I see that you're using a TV as a monitor. My apologies.

Have you tried switching the graphics to YCbCr422 or YCbCr444 rather than RGB? That may be more TV-ish.

spapakons · Tuesday at 12:13 AM

If you are trying 3840x2160 (aka 4k) resolution, then you might be limited to 8bpc because of the cable bandwidth. Try switching to 1920x1080 (aka full HD or 1080p).

captainfearless · Tuesday at 2:06 PM

10 bit colour is back! Have been in contact with Nvidia and did a clean up and reinstall.

It's a little confusing though. I tried the studio driver and that only offered 10 bit at 1920 x 1080 res but when i changed the res back to 4k it saved the 10 bit setting.

When i tried the game driver it offers 10 bit straight away at 3840 x 2160 native but only at 24hz RR, at 60hz only 8 bit.

This is the cable i am using. https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0919GTQS9?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

Surely 10 bit should appear at 60hz and beyond?

captainfearless · Tuesday at 2:51 PM

Thanks to spapakons for telling me to try 1080p.

spapakons · Tuesday at 3:01 PM

For 10-bit color at 4K the cable, the PC HDMI output and the TV input must all support at least HDMI version 2.0 or higher. 1080p is not bad at all and since the GPU has to process less data you can achieve higher frame rates and enable more visual effects in game than with 4K resolution. Besides you couldn't see the difference between 4K and 1080p when there is too fast action on screen.

bobkn · Tuesday at 4:49 PM

This may not matter, but:

What's your particular PC model?

Which HDMI input are you using?

captainfearless · 2026-06-03T02:30:01-0400

Intel Core i7-8700 There are two HDMI ports on this model and I did try the other one but when I did there was no resolution section in the Nvidia control panel so I’m guessing maybe it’s just an input?

Vanishing 10 bit colour

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