Yeah, i still need to do the v sync toggle to avoid the refresh rate sitting at 50MHz, but the darkness is away, i can now see the man in the brightness setting screen using 60MHz and so i don't need to use the r_HDRLevel = 12 thingy, which has given me a nice performance boost too.
I deleted my hard drive and re-installed the game is all, easy fix!
*hoping for MP performance boost too.