The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.

Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

16-bit vs. 32-bit color

Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by EagleDevil, Sep 24, 2006.

EagleDevil Notebook Evangelist

Reputations:

7

Messages:

405

Likes Received:

0

Trophy Points:

30

Just wondering: In various control panels it appears that sometimes my T60 is set to 32-bit color (Display control panel), other times to 16-bit (ATI Catalyst Control Center).

So first, what does that mean that my computer is actually displaying? Does one setting override the other?

Is there any reason not to run at maximum color settings? Will I notice a difference? In playing around with them, I can't say I did.

Chris

EagleDevil, Sep 24, 2006

#1
Ethyriel Notebook Deity

Reputations:

207

Messages:

1,531

Likes Received:

0

Trophy Points:

55

16-bit is only 65k colors, 32-bit is actually 24-bit plus an alpha channel and thus 16.7 million colors. If you're not seeing a difference it's either not changing properly or it could be because your panel is only capable of 18-bit color and dithers up to about 24-bit.

I don't know what you're actually getting, sorry. You might try making sure you have a .inf installed for your LCD, the ATI drivers might not realize it's capable of a higher bit depth.

I would assume the ATI drivers are determining what you're seeing, since the video card is the last link in the chain before the signal gets sent to the monitor. But I don't know, maybe the drivers cede control to Windows.

Ethyriel, Sep 24, 2006

#2