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6 bit panel versus an 8 bit panel

S

splintitan

Senior member
whats the main advantage of having an 8bit over a 6? from what i see its just more collors but if anyone can expand on that it would be great.
thanks
 
Originally posted by: splintitan
whats the main advantage of having an 8bit over a 6? from what i see its just more collors but if anyone can expand on that it would be great.
thanks
Click to expand...

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You should have explained you were talking about LCD panels. Yes an 8-bit panel produces over 16.7 million colors. a 6-bit produces 262,164. Colors will look far more natural on an 8-bit panel, because a 6-bit panel has to do a lot more work ('dithering') to produce the color spectrum.

See under 'Video' in this hardware section. The guide to buying an LCD.

-Bob
 
18 bit color = 262,144 colors
24 bit color = 16,777,216 colors, or 64 times as many.

18-bit is worse for watching movies and working with photographs. For games it's less noticeable (since we don't have photorealism yet) and for office applications it doesn't make any difference.
 
So here's how to tell. Open the gray gradient bitmap below in your favorite image editor and zoom it up to the size of your screen. On 8-bit monitors, the lower level will be a stepped but steady gray gradient. On 6-bit monitors, you will see dithering patterns, either static or sparkling, in the gray tones. You may need to look closely at first. The dithering is how the monitor displays intermediate colors to go from it's native 262k colors (6 bits x 3 color channels) to the 16.8 million of true 8-bit representations. You may also see very mild red and green casts, varying with the dithered tone.

Simply said, if you not concerned with colors, stay with 6bit, but if you want true color that's brighter and better defined, 8bit is the only way to go. Watch a movie on your monitor. You can distinguish the difference more readily.
 
Most (basically all) 6-bit desktop panels use FRC (frame rate control) to reach 16.2M colors, or Hi-FRC to reach 16.7M. The main difference is whether you see dithery/flickery patterns in the colors or don't. It just so happens that the 8-bit panels also have much higher contrast than the 6-bit ones. Personally I don't think it's as big a deal as the contrast, but it can be annoying seeing these patterns in dark background colors on webpages. 6-bit LCDs are inherently faster, but 8-bit/high-contrast ones have caught up to the point where they're the best overall for gaming for most people.
 
It will say it in the specs, perhaps the more detailed ones on the mfg site. If not, 6-bit panels are usually TN, asi, MVA and PVA. 8-bit panels are usaully S-IPS, S-PVA or S-MVA. Can you tell us what monitor in specific you're looking at?
 
The L194WT uses Hi-FRC to reach 16.7M, so it is not true 8-bit (without dithering) either. The 940BW uses regular FRC to reach 16.2M.
 
if outpost would not have cancelled my order of the 940bw (170 after rebate) then i would have bin happy with it. but the lg looks like it has the upper hand, are looks deceiving?
 
if i have it sent to the store i save $15 in shipping but there is still 15 tax... not looking to spend that much. its not a very common screen so its impossible to find used; i might just stay with my ViewSonic VX2235WM and call it a day.
 
I don't know what kinda panel my ViewSonic VX2235wm uses or what kinda bit it has, or how many 16.x million colors it can pump out, but I've been using it for about a week and I'm very happy with the purchase. It makes playing WoW and watching movies much more enjoyable than my old Sony 18" LCD.
 
from what i have read the lg seems to have color blurr issues... has anyone had any experience with it? is the samsung is the safest bet?
 
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