Switch between 16-bit and 32-bit color depths

A few years ago, switching from 32-bit t0 16-bit color depths in Windows was a great performance boost. Gamers more than regular Office users have felt the impact of turning to a lower bit rate – game graphics run more smoothly because the 16-bit mode uses less resource with almost unnoticeable drop in graphics quality.

Using 32-bit color takes up a great deal more memory than 16-bit color, and it puts a greater strain on your processor. If you primarily use business applications such as word processors and spreadsheets, you most likely won’t notice a different between 16-bit and 32-bit color, so going with 16-bit color is a good bet.

To change your color depth, right-click the desktop, choose Properties, click on the Settings tab, and in the Color Quality box choose 16 bit.

After applying the change, open a graphics intensive program like a movie player or a game and see if there is an increase in performance. If you are happy with the result, keep the settings. It would be a compromise between performance and the color quality of your programs, so you decide which setting you want to use.

Another reason to downgrade to a lower color quality is if you are using a computer with a crappy graphics card. Most cheap notebooks and laptops nowadays come with less powerful “built-in” graphics cards to bring down cost.

If you have that type of built-in graphics device (integrated video card) that shares resource with your RAM – setting the color quality to 16-bit is a great performance boost.