Slower card of TNT2 & 3dfx generations, esp with 16MB RAM really benefit from 16bit colour. For modern gfx cards like GF3, GF4TI & Radeon8500 you only want to consider 32bit colour, and prob AA as well! Of course actual perf diffs do depend upon the card and CPU used. With 'slower' CPUs and higher end gfx cards you really want to max out gfx settings with AA, Aniso and of course 32bit colour in order to use the full GPU potential that the CPU may not tap. Obviously you get fewer comparable results when shifting from the default 1024x768x32 as fewer people run or submit them but this should still be quite accurate. Obviously lowering the resolution or detail settings a little may be more pleasurable than 16bit colour, do bear in mind that on GF3 & GF4TI cards you may be actually slowing things down by switching to 16bit! But of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder . I also put detail in front of everything when I choose display settings for a game, I love detail. 16bit colour, or more accurately 16bit shades of colour uses 2 to the power of 16, ie 65536. 32bit uses 24bit colour (the other 8bits are reserved) which gives 2 to 24, ie 16777216 (16.8 million). It is difficult for most people to distinguish between 16bit and 32bit colour but with the way in which modern gfx cards have evolved 32bit is now very nearly as fast as 16bit, and as seen above performance can actually be worse at 16bit. This is most probably due to any relatively modern game actually using 32bit samples for textures and game detail which means that they can be used without translation, but by switching to 16bit you are freeing up bandwidth (less colours means less data to be processed) but you then have to convert 32bit to 16bit before processing. This 'scaling' of colour often leads to distortion and 'banding' (where shades of colours should be smooth but visible different colour bands can be seen). IMHO, if you have a modern gfx card (GF3 or Radeon8500 or higher) then you really should consider 32bit as default and alter detail levels or resolutions in order to make the game smoother. With so many detail options and gfx card capabilities it does take some experiemnting to find the balance between high performance and high quality but it really comes down to what is personally acceptible and preferable to you.
Yes, you definitely should as there'll be a large difference in image qualitty between 16 bit and 32 bit. Look at the smoke and lighting from explosions to see some obvious differences. In 32 bit mode it'll look smooth while 16 bit mode will exhibit banding.
The Kyro/Kyro2 will still load 16 bit textures instead of 32 bit textures when the game requests 16 bit colour, causing a small performance difference in the benchmarks. The rest of the rendering will still be 32 bit though.
Unless the memory and bandwidth situation becomes a problem, such as with very high detail or resolutions then 16bit actually seems slower on the top cards, but I would imagine it would mostly depend upon the game and the game engine. When the memory bandwidth becomes the limiting factor then you should see an improvement in speed by switching to 16bit, but most people don't think the trade off is worth it due to reduced effects and image quality. You may find it better, if you want the higher resolution, to lower the detail settings a little rather than drop to 16bit, but it is down to individual taste. For the top cards, GF3, GF4TI, Radeon8500 (& LE) and Matrox P512, you really want to enable effects like AA. Because GF3 & GF4 cards use the fast but guessy MS-AA it is well worth enabling Aniso, 2xAA or QxAA with Ani are good and fast, or you could try 4xS-AA depending whether you are using DirX or OpenGL. Radeon8500 cards use SS-AA and as such you don't really need Aniso to resharpen textures, SS-AA has a big enough perf hit as is. Matrox P512 is still very new but offers the selective sampling AA (forgot the name) where only certain parts of the image get SS-AA leading to greater perf but more erratic frame rates. You may find these measures will lower perf and prob resolution but the games should look a lot better for it. I think it's just a matter of trying out the settings and seeing what you prefer. The Matrox Parhelia-512 uses Fragment Super-Sampling, SS-AA is used on selective parts of the image and also has the draw-back that some jaggies are missed. However, the P512 can use alternative AA methods so you aren't tied in to Fragment AA. What I was trying to make clear regarding GF3 & GF4 AA was that the best settings in terms of quality and perf is to use either 2xAA & Aniso, QxAA & Aniso or 4xS AA without Aniso. That way you get the benefits of AA but also get sharp detailed textures and still get better perf than simply using SS-AA. IIRC officially 4xS is only for DirX and Aniso is only for OpenGL but I believe this can be overcome via Powerstrip. It's ghastly surprising just how many people hold on to old rumours/truths. First I hear people saying how RIMM is ALWAYS far better than DDR, and now almost everybody seems to think Matrox & ATI still hold all the image quality cards! GF2 had comparitively poor image quality, GF3 were better but still far behind both Matrox and ATI. GF4 cards have excellent image quality! That's coming from consumers as well as reviewers. Even an independent research on the part of Matrox (in prep for their P512) shows that GF4 are now better than even ATI and probably better than all but P512 Matrox cards! Again, the majority of users, even with something better than the 15" monitors most people still use, probably couldn't tell the difference between Matrox P512 and a GF2 for image quality, but the differences are still there. The GF4TI4200 is a tremendous performer and has excellent image quality. The new enhanced Radeon8500 will probably equal it, but it will be a good while before it comes out in great quantities and the review sites catch them. The new gen of cards due out: well AGP8x is more about marketing than perf, and the vast majority of DX9 capable games will be a year away, by then better cards will be out anyway. The GF4TI4200 is unlikely to come down in price, more so than a any other card .. agreat deal and a great time to buy (just like the Radeon8500LE was when that was released). If you start waiting you may never finish!
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