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Does 16 BPP use less memory than 32 BPP?

by Aaron K Murray · in Torque Game Builder · 01/14/2008 (7:08 pm) · 5 replies

Does 16 bits per pixel use less memory than 32 BPP?

I want to test out memory usage differences between 16 bpp and 32 bpp.

I've had no luck getting TGB to start the game using 16 BPP however. I've tried changing both commonConfig.xml and the default settings in _defaultGameConfigurationData() (in properties.cs)

Help?
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Torque 3D Owner Jason Ravencroft
#1
01/14/2008 (7:14 pm)
16bpp uses about half of the space. I know that sounds obvious. I'm not entirely sure that 16bpp supports transparency, but I'm pretty sure it does. Honestly, I haven't looked into it much, but if you want to improve performance that's one way of doing it.

Torque 3D Owner Caylo Gypsyblood
#2
01/14/2008 (7:20 pm)
On some video cards YES. Some cards have a fixed framebuffer at 24bits, so there is no point in useing less then 32bit. Most often the difference will be noticed with cheap integrated video chips. One place where the bpp would be noticed is moving the graphic from RAM to video RAM, and size on disk- so load times.

Torque Owner Aaron K Murray
#3
01/14/2008 (7:22 pm)
Do you guys know how I can enable 16 bpp? I mentioned the two ways I've tried so far, but in the console I can see this:

Setting screen mode to 800x600x32 (w)...
Creating a new window...
Acquiring a new device context...
Pixel format set:
  32 color bits, 24 depth bits, 8 stencil bits

And of course, there is no memory usage difference in Task Manager (wouldn't there be?)

Torque Owner Michael Hartlef
#4
01/15/2008 (7:05 am)
On newer graphiccards, using 16bbp instead of 32 can cause a slower performance.

Torque Owner Aaron K Murray
#5
01/15/2008 (7:59 am)
Hi Michael, I've heard this before, but I am not too worried about that because I would rather have the low end cards/systems get a bump in framerate (to stay above 30). Higher end systems are running 200-300+ FPS now so it wouldn't matter.

Can anyone from GarageGames help out on this one?