Windows shows display as 8 bit, display adapter says it's 32 bit and HWinfo says it;s 6 bit- what's going on here?

[DeS_2002]

This is an old laptop from around 2011, with a pentium p6200 and no dedicated GPU, and I was fiddling around in the display settings when I saw that differenet programs show the built in display as having different bit depths.

 

Windows display properties shows the bit depth is 8 bit .

https://imgur.com/QmBB1tS

 

The display adapter 'list all modes' list shows that it's running at 32 bits,    ( https://imgur.com/zi6CFiU  , and no matter what option I choose, windows display adapter properties ( https://imgur.com/QmBB1tS ) still shows the display is 8 bits.

 

And HWinfo shows that bits per primary color is 6 bits.  ( https://imgur.com/ew9tikZ  )

Which means bits per pixel is 18 bits?

 

I am confused as to what the actual bits per channel and bits per pixel of this monitor is.

Anyone know what's going on here?

 

 

[Glenwing]

1 hour ago, DeS_2002 said:

Windows display properties shows the bit depth is 8 bit .

https://imgur.com/QmBB1tS

This is the color depth of the video signal being transmitted to the display, in bits per channel (bpc). 8 bpc is equal to 24 bit/px.

1 hour ago, DeS_2002 said:

The display adapter 'list all modes' list shows that it's running at 32 bits,    ( https://imgur.com/zi6CFiU  , and no matter what option I choose, windows display adapter properties ( https://imgur.com/QmBB1tS ) still shows the display is 8 bits.

This is the color depth that the Windows desktop is being rendered at. It is always 8 bpc, or 32 bit/px. In software there are 4 channels: R, G, B, and alpha (transparency). For transmitting to the display, all the colors and transparencies of the various windows and applications are calculated into a single 24-bit value for each pixel. So 32 bit/px software is transmitted at 24 bit/px and is the same as 8 bpc color depth.

1 hour ago, DeS_2002 said:

And HWinfo shows that bits per primary color is 6 bits.  ( https://imgur.com/ew9tikZ  )

Which means bits per pixel is 18 bits?

HWiNFO reads the EDID of the monitor, which means this is the information programmed into the monitor by the manufacturer (not a sensor reading). It may be a typo, or more likely it is the physical bit depth of the display. Most displays (especially laptops) will accept 8 bpc signal, and use a 6 bpc panel with FRC to implement 8 bpc color depth.

 

All in all, your display is showing 8 bpc (24 bit/px) color depth.