Desktop Image Quality

[pillainp]

Hi all,

Why is this happening? In this one user profile (the one I use by default), the image quality of the desktop and icons decreases markedly when I shift from 32-bit color to 16-bit color. Also, frame rates in games are 10-15% lower than in any of the other two user profiles on this system. This does not happen in either of the other profiles. I am attaching screenshots of the current profile desktop at 32-bit color and 16-bit color (next post in thread). Notice the marked drop in icon quality and color (esp IE).
I have tried installing the Detonator drivers from this profile with admin rights (currently running as Power User), but the same thing happens.
This never happens in either of the other two profiles.

Any suggestions or help greatly appreciated.

Detonator version: 43.45 for Win2K/XP

Video card and DirectX version as in sig.

TIA
NPP

[pillainp]

Hi again,
This is the same desktop at 16-bit color, everything else as above:

Notice the marked drop in the quality of the icons.

Also, along with lower frame rates, games tend to crash more in this profile than in any of the others.


NPP

[Big Weapons]

That's because 32bit color provides twice the amount of colors that 16bit provides.

[glc]

I hate to be nitpicky, but it's a lot more than twice - 16 bit color is 65536 colors, 32 bit is millions of colors - you have to remember it's binary.

I can't really guess what the problem might be, but I think it might have something to do with what else is running in that profile which isn't running in the others.

[pillainp]

It's actually exponential:

16-bit color: 256x256=65,536 unique shades
24-bit color: 256x256x256=16,777,216 unique shades
32-bit color: 256x256x256x256=4,294,967,296 unique shades

256 being the number of unique shades available when running 8-bit color.

glc,
there really is nothing running on this profile alone that i can think of. It has been this way ever since I installed XP, since I did all of that on this profile as admin, way before I ever created the present admin profile and the other user profile on this system. The only other active profile on this systemis the default system admin profile created by XP istself.
I have Powerstrip 3.4 running, but that is the same for all the profiles on the system, as is the fact that I am running one of the Lightstar themes on each profile.

NPP

[pillainp]

Hi again,

This is another profile on the same system. Notice that there is no visible difference in the icons in either 32-bit or 16-bit modes.

This is the desktop at 32-bit color.

[pillainp]

And this the same desktop as above at 16-bit color.

Normally the human eye would find it difficult to distinguish between 16-bit high color and 32-bit true color at first glance, but i hope this demonstrates the huge disparity between the first two pics that i posted in this thread.