ATI Radeon VE 32MB

16-bit vs 32-bit Performance

As we have seen in the past, the Radeon cards do not loose as much performance when making the switch from 16-bit color to 32-bit color. The performance decrease in the Radeon VE from 1024x768x16 to 1024x768x32 was about 17%. In contrast, the GeForce2 MX dropped 49% when making the resolution switch.

The Radeon VE going from 1600x1200x16 to 1600x1200x32 dropped 25% in performance, while the GeForce2 dropped 78%. Although the margin of difference between 32-bit color and 16-bit color is attractive because of the lack of performance decrease when switching resolution to one of higher color, it is not as good in the long run. Since falling back on 16-bit color will not provide as much of a performance boost in the case of the Radeon VE when compared to the GeForce2 MX, future games may have some trouble running up to par on this card.