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Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2001
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Also I will point out from that article that the dithering brings the display technically up to 16.2million colors:6 bit has worse viewing angles and less faithful color reproduction, it only has something like 256,000 colors, but uses dithering to supposedly make it look like much more. 8 bit has 16.7 million colors possible. Some people notice it much more than others.
six bit is fine for gaming - but once you go 8 bit it's hard to go back to 6 bit.
8 bit is better for photo or video manipulation because colors are more true to life.
Here's an excert from an online article that explains in detail...
Now color depth was previous referred to by the total number of colors that the screen can render, but when referring to LCD panels the number of levels that each color can render is used instead. This can make things difficult to understand, but to demonstrate, we will look at the mathematics of it. For example, 24-bit or true color is comprised of three colors each with 8-bits of color. Mathematically, this is represented as:
2^8 x 2^8 x 2^8 = 256 x 256 x 256 = 16,777,216
High-speed LCD monitors typically reduce the number of bits for each color to 6 instead of the standard 8. This 6-bit color will generate far fewer colors than 8-bit as we see when we do the math:
2^6 x 2^6 x 2^6 = 64 x 64 x 64 = 262,144
This is far fewer than the true color display such that it would be noticeable to the human eye. To get around this problem, the manufacturers employ a technique referred to as dithering. This is an effect where nearby pixels use slightly varying shades or color that trick the human eye into perceiving the desired color even though it isn't truly that color. A color newspaper photo is a good way to see this effect in practice. (In print the effect is called half-tones.) By using this technique, the manufacturers claim to achieve a color depth close to that of the true color displays.
http://compreviews.about.com/od/multimedia/a/LCDColor.htm
This is no longer the case, many 6bit TN's in the past 6months have been seen advertisign 16.7million.If the manufacturer lists the color as 16.7 million colors, it should be assumed that the display is 8-bit per-color. If the colors are listed as being 16.2 million or 16 million, consumers should assume that it uses a 6-bit per-color depth.
And this:
I suppose they forgot to mention it's also good for epeen wagging on message boards.Does it Really Matter?
This is very subjective to the actual user and what the computer is used for. The amount of color really matters to those that do professional work on graphics. For these people, the amount of color that is displayed on the screen is very important. The average consumer is not going to really need this level of color representation by their monitor. As a result, it probably doesn't matter. People using their displays for video games or watching video will likely not care about the number of colors rendered by the LCD but by the speed at which it can be displayed. As a result, it is best to determine your needs and base your purchase on those criteria.