What is the theoretical maximum resolution at 16bit color?

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 21 Sep 2007, 16:55

Shouldn't it be higher? I bet some people would love triple 1920*1200 at 16bit color, I know I would.

Post by **Abram** » 26 Sep 2007, 01:47

What woudl be the point?
It'
s been years since 16bit made a performance difference compared to 32bit, and of course, it's looks like ass. USre, it's be possible to go up pretty high.. but then again I also knwo what putting a bullet in my head maydo - but it's sitll a shitty idea.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 26 Sep 2007, 04:57

I bet you would have trouble telling the difference between two displays one set to 16 bit one to 32 unless they were side by side or using images with VERY gradual gradients.

Why do you have to insult my idea and indirectly myself like that? You must be a very unhappy person to be able to behave so rudely.

Post by **MobsterOO7** » 26 Sep 2007, 15:12

I bet you would have trouble telling the difference between two displays one set to 16 bit one to 32 unless they were side by side or using images with VERY gradual gradients.

You are correct sir. I'm using a dual monitor setup and one of them was accidentally set to 16-bit color for like a month. The only thing I noticed during that time was that my mouse looked strange when hovering over a fullscreened video in VLC. But that was probably only because I was using CursorXP with UISTA mouse theme at the time, (lots of transparency effects).

geeman · Post by **geeman** » 27 Sep 2007, 21:55

Theoretical maximum resolution of what?

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 28 Sep 2007, 00:23

That is a good question, the TH2G

geeman · Post by **geeman** » 28 Sep 2007, 11:10

Ok. The color depth doesn't effect the max resolution. The resolution is limited by DirectX maximum texture size. Which is 4096x4096. OpenGL probably has a similar limitation too. Because of this limitation all GPUs only support resolutions up to 4096x4069.
DirectX10 has widened the limit to 8192x8192 though, so it would be even possible to use triple 30" monitors, with DirectX10 GPUs.
So maybe in the future we can have bigger resolutions when Matrox updates their hardware, again..

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 28 Sep 2007, 13:59

Wouldn't a texture size limit, limit texture size? Or does direct X consider the final output a texture as well? BTW it is possible to render an image without textures.

My theory is that color depth does not limit size directly but that transferring a VGA image at 16 bit consumes less bandwidth than xfering a 16 bit or less image.

geeman · Post by **geeman** » 28 Sep 2007, 17:47

Wouldn't a texture size limit, limit texture size? Or does direct X consider the final output a texture as well? BTW it is possible to render an image without textures.

Yes. The final output image is a one single texture.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 28 Sep 2007, 18:52

Well doesn't matter because that is only for single window 3D apps. And my question still remains unanswered as to weather an 800*600 16 Bit signal over VGA or DVI consumes less or the same amount of bandwidth as a 32 Bit signal.

But alas I contacted Matrox and they said that the resolution was not only limited by bandwidth but also by the video chipset so even if they could take a higher resolution signal over a given cable into the TH2G it may not be possible for a video card to output that resolution.

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