Is 128bit Color going to be the next big thing?

[magomago]

I was just wondering...to me the last big deal was BumpMapping vs AA with Geforce2vsVoodoo5 showdown. Everything else just seems to come from that (though I guess AF made a splash but nothing as huge...)

But I rembember previews of the the 9700pro showing 32bit vs 128bit color and I was impressed by them...but obviously it made the card 4 times slower in 128 bit color....

And like I earlier said everything so far seems to be "perfecting" whatever we have had...so does anyone also agree that 128bit color is the next big thing, or are there dissenting opinions?

 

[rbV5]

Internal 128bit floating point precision is not 128 bit color, you are still only "seeing" 24bit color.

 

[Genx87]

I dont believe the R3.xx cards atually render in 128bit. I believe it is all done at 96 bit no matter what the color depth.
Nvidias FX series can render in 12bit(integer), 16bit (partial precision DX9), and IEEE 32bit.

In a way the R3.xx is good and simple. And another way it is kind of less flexible.

Do i think 128bit color is the next big thing? Honestly I doubt it for gaming........ DX9 Full precision is 24bit so I highly doubt game developers will use the IEEE 32bit option from Nvidia. I honestly think for the near future 3-4 years 16bit FP color will become the norm.

 

[TerryMathews]

128 bit color would be ~3.5x10^38 colors. I don't think the human eye can even differentiate between that many colors...

 

[JackBurton]

The next big thing is more freakin' polygons!!!

 

[Ronin]

Matrox Parhelia's 'have' 10GB color for the desktop, but you'd never see the difference. It's really not something your eyes would be able to differentiate from.

 

[Schadenfroh]

and here i am, i cant even tell the differance in 16 bit and 32bit in 3d

 

[JulesMaximus]

Nah, it'll never catch on.

 

In any event, I think that 64 bit is next in line.

 

[modedepe]

Next big thing..no way. I'm with schaden, I can't tell the difference between 16 and 32, give me 128 and I won't see any difference either. Unless I'm completely abnormal, I doubt others would see much of a difference with 128 either.

 

[Pete]

Originally posted by: magomago
But I rembember previews of the the 9700pro showing 32bit vs 128bit color and I was impressed by them...but obviously it made the card 4 times slower in 128 bit color....

You must be misremembering. The 9700P shouldn't be 4x slower in 128-bit, as it's not a linear fall-off, nor are you even talking about the same things. The 9700P processes both 16-bit ints and 24-bit fp's (24b R, G, B, A = 96-bit) on the same hardware, so there should be minimal speed difference. And the cards with 128-bit floating point shaders still output to 32-bit buffers, so you're not going to see more than 32-bits (24 plus alpha, really) onscreen. Surely Anand covered this in one of his DX9-compliant video card previews.

I can certainly tell the difference between 16- and 32-bit color. If you can, you must be red and green colorblind, or haven't played many FPS games with smoke effects.

And yes, I think (128-bit/IEEE32) floating point shaders is The Next Big Thing in 3D.