24-bit TFT monitor / Video drivers / Games compatibility

[Kaizen]

I'm about to build a new rig, but, for the moment at least, plan on keeping my current 24-bit TFT monitor. I've had problems with ATI drivers in the past no longer supporting 24-bit displays, so, as I'll be getting an nVidia 7800GT, I'm now wondering whether nVidia's latest drivers support 24-bit displays and also whether the latest games also support this bit depth.

Anyone know anything about this?

Thanks in advance

[Butcher]

Yes they work fine, why wouldn't they?

[directhex]

I'm about to build a new rig, but, for the moment at least, plan on keeping my current 24-bit TFT monitor. I've had problems with ATI drivers in the past no longer supporting 24-bit displays, so, as I'll be getting an nVidia 7800GT, I'm now wondering whether nVidia's latest drivers support 24-bit displays and also whether the latest games also support this bit depth.

Anyone know anything about this?

Thanks in advance

presumably you mean 24-bit color display?

24-bit is 8 bits per color channel. 32-bit is the same, with an alpha channel. 24 and 32-bit screens are exactly the same thing - the alpha channel is only used internally to the graphics card.

you can set 32-bit color, and it'll work exactly the same as 24-bit color (note that linux has no 32-bit color option, you say 24-bit and it might do 32-bit depending on whether your card wants it)

[Butcher]

Most cards don't use the extra 8-bits actually, they're just left undefined. It's faster to waste a big bunch of memory than to multiply by 3 instead of 4.

[Kaizen]

presumably you mean 24-bit color display?

24-bit is 8 bits per color channel. 32-bit is the same, with an alpha channel. 24 and 32-bit screens are exactly the same thing - the alpha channel is only used internally to the graphics card.

you can set 32-bit color, and it'll work exactly the same as 24-bit color (note that linux has no 32-bit color option, you say 24-bit and it might do 32-bit depending on whether your card wants it)

... in theory.

On my old ATI Rage 3D card, 24-bit mode gave smooth transitions between changing colours, but 32-bit mode actually produced banding like the 16-bit mode did. The latest driver for it dropped support for 24-bit mode, so I had to revert to the old driver to get smooth colour transitions again.

I've now built the new rig and 32-bit mode on the 7800GT does give smooth(ish) colour transitions on my 24-bit TFT... I do see banding at times, but I'm not sure whether that's because of the monitor or whether only 16-bit images/textures are being shown... for the most part, though, it's definitely better than how it looked on my old ATI card using the 32-bit driver.

Still on the subject of TFT monitors, even though this one is 16ms, I still get slight blurring when rotating the viewpoint in FPS games which has a tendency to induce motion sickness. I used to play PS2 games on the TV all the time and never experienced that. Is it just me or does anyone else get affected like that?

[Butcher]

... in theory.

On my old ATI Rage 3D card, 24-bit mode gave smooth transitions between changing colours, but 32-bit mode actually produced banding like the 16-bit mode did. The latest driver for it dropped support for 24-bit mode, so I had to revert to the old driver to get smooth colour transitions again.

Well the Rage 3Ds were a heap of garbage to be fair. I'm not surprised they had broken 32-bit mode.
32-bit mode should be indistinguishable from 24-bit mode since they display the same number of colours.

I've now built the new rig and 32-bit mode on the 7800GT does give smooth(ish) colour transitions on my 24-bit TFT... I do see banding at times, but I'm not sure whether that's because of the monitor or whether only 16-bit images/textures are being shown... for the most part, though, it's definitely better than how it looked on my old ATI card using the 32-bit driver.

Banding could be 16-bit textures, compressed textures, 16-bit output, or your monitor could be a 16.2M colour model, instead of a 16.7M colour model. 16.2M colour models only process 18-bit data, then interpolate to 16.2M colours, this can introduce banding artifacts.
Quality TFTs process the full 24-bits.

Still on the subject of TFT monitors, even though this one is 16ms, I still get slight blurring when rotating the viewpoint in FPS games which has a tendency to induce motion sickness. I used to play PS2 games on the TV all the time and never experienced that. Is it just me or does anyone else get affected like that?

Was it an LCD TV? Many LCDs have some level of motion blur, while CRTs don't.
I can't say I'm higely bothered by it, and I certainly don't suffer from motion sickness.