What is Color Depth ?

Color depth of a monitor is also known as the bit-depth of a monitor. Color depth indicates the number of bits used per pixel to represent the color shade of a single pixel in an image.

Computer monitors use Red, Green and Blue as primary colors. All colors displayed are produced by mixing shades of Red, Green and Blue.

Any image passed by the graphics card to the monitor for rendering therefore includes Red, Green and Blue color information for each pixel in the image.

Color depth is one of the important features to look for in a gaming monitor especially if you plan to use your monitor for professional color accurate work such as photo-editing.

Common Color Depths

• 8-bit : 8-bit monitor uses 8-bits each for Red, Green and Blue to represent the color shade of a pixel. This basically means there are a total of 24-bits that are used to represent the color of a single pixel. Shades of Red, Green and Blue combine together to give the resultant color of a pixel. An eight bit monitor can produce a total of 16 million colors approximately. Some monitors use color dithering (6 bits native color depth + 2-bits FRC) to achieve an 8-bit color depth
• 10-bit: A 10-bit monitor uses 10-bits each for Red, Green and Blue to represent the color shade of a pixel. This basically means there are a total of 30-bits that are used to represent the color of a single pixel. Shades of Red, Green and Blue combine together to give the resultant color of a pixel. An eight bit monitor can produce a total of 1 billion colors approximately. Some 8-bit native monitors use an additional 2-bits of dithering to achieve a 10-bit color depth This bit-depth is popular in HDR monitors