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    Color Quality 32bit vs. 16bit ?

    Discussion in 'Lenovo' started by vintage321, Dec 2, 2008.

  1. vintage321

    vintage321 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello, i have an x200s and the colors on some programs are off unless the color quality is set to 32bit. Is there a performance issue when switching to 32bit from 16bit?

    Thanks
     
    vintage321, Dec 2, 2008
    #1
  2. Patrick

    Patrick Formerly beat spamers with stiks

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    Erm, I think most computers default to 32bit. At least both my desktop and Asus do...
     
    Patrick, Dec 2, 2008
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  3. zerosource

    zerosource Notebook Deity

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    No vista aero on 16bit
     
    zerosource, Dec 3, 2008
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  4. Matt is Pro

    Matt is Pro I'm a PC, so?

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    32bit is going to be better...
     
    Matt is Pro, Dec 3, 2008
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  5. pacmandelight

    pacmandelight Notebook Deity

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    Older graphics cards (circa 1990s) ran games slower in 32-bit color vs. 16-bit color. Nowadays, graphics card suffer no tangible penalty running in 32-bit color.

    (This is purely conjecture, but perhaps there is slightly less power consumption in 16-bit color than 32-bit color.)

    In short, I would keep the color at 32-bit for best image quality.
     
    pacmandelight, Dec 3, 2008
    #5
  6. jonlumpkin

    jonlumpkin NBR Transmogrifier

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    There should be little to no difference in performance on modern hardware, so I would just stick with 32 bit.

    Also, you should know that 32 bit, really isn't 32 bit. It is 24 bit color with 8 bits of padding to bring it up to 2^5. Further, Thinkpads (and almost all LCDs) can only display 6 bits (64 colors) per channel, they use dithering to make up the rest. For this reason, 32 bit becomes effectively 18 bit, so you won't see much color quality difference either (although some programs/features may not run at 16 bit color).
     
    jonlumpkin, Dec 3, 2008
    #6