24bit vs 16bit

On the downside: A lot of cards don''t support 24 bit, only 32 bit. Even with 24 bit color, you''re still talking 50% more memory bandwidth than 16 color and 50% more memory to store your images. Many cards are still optimized for 16 bit over 24 or 32 bit.

On the upside: It''s a little more straight-forward to code, and looks a little better.

With that list, I''m inclined to choose 16 bit over 24 bit. The 50% memory bandwidth is a lot.

Hi,
using 24-bits is useless, because it isn''t as fast as using 32-bits, the only point is that it needs less memory, but is more time consuming, since you have to send 2 byte + 1 byte for a pixel which will be slower than 2 * 16 byte or 1 * 32 byte. 16-bit is ok for 2d-graphics, i guess the format''s you''ll have to worry about are 5-5-5, 5-6-5 and 4-4-4-4, other ones are not used anymore (I hope ).

Graphix Coding @
Skullpture Entertainment
http://www.skullpture.de

If it makes you feel better, 8-bit is simply a mini-version of 24-bit

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Original post by Zipster
If it makes you feel better, 8-bit is simply a mini-version of 24-bit

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No, it''s not. 8-bit is a palettized color mode. 24-bit encodes color information directly in the data bits. No simple general-case color smoothing functions in 8-bit. No palette animations in 24-bit.

I haven''t heard of any 4-8-4 combinations on 16bit color. The only ones I heard of are 5-5-5, 5-6-5, and maybe 5-5-5-1 i think(or was it 1-5-5-5)

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No, it''s not

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Uh, SiCrane, let me a little more specific, because you misunderstood me. 8-bit uses a palette, but isn''t it true that each index in the palette has an 8-bit red, green, and blue field? Yes. Similar to 24-bit. That''s where the work "mini-version" came into play. The only reason it''s not as good as 24-bit (not including that 24-bit is not supported on most cards), is that only 256 of those 16.8 million colors can be visible at once.

Actually, depending on the card, 8 bit modes can only have 6 bits of color information per color. And also you said "simply a mini-version." Palettization is a very fundamental change. You can''t label that with a "simply".

you guys need to let things like that slide. geez =)

just some input, go for 16bit. it''s disgustingly faster on most machines (you want the biggest audience i hope, ex i get 136 fps in 16bit but 56fps in 24bit.).

24bit/32bit doesn''t even look *that* much better, and some cards don''t support one of them. Just about EVERY video card supports 16 bit.

You only have to deal with the weird-oh bit configurations of 16 bits if you want to do d3d or will be locking the surfaces. I hope you stay with 16bit.