User`s guide

Page 40

Buffers Your ATI accelerator card includes on-board memory

which is used in a number of ways. Buffers are portions of

this memory used as temporary storage on your card. One

large buffer is always used to display the screen you see;

this is the “display buffer”. The rest of offscreen memory

is used by applications as back buffers, z-buffers, and

texture buffers.

Color Depth Color depth is the number of color shades available on

your display. The color depth of your monitor is measured

in bits per pixel (bpp), and usually includes 256 colors

(8-bpp), Thousands of colors (16-bpp), and Millions of

colors (32-bpp). You can switch your color depth using the

ATI Popup Menu, Apple’s Control Strip, or the

Monitors & Sound control panel. Higher bit-depths

require more display buffer memory.

Note: The ATI 3D Accelerator only functions in

Thousands and Millions of colors modes.

Fog The blending of an object with a ﬁxed color as objects or

pixels increase distance away from the viewer.

Frame

Buffer

Memory buffer used to store the image being displayed.

Gouraud

Shading

One of the more sophisticated shading methods used to

produce a smooth lighting effect across a 3D object. A

speciﬁc color is used at each vertice of a triangle or

polygon, and interpolated across the entire face.

MIP Map Multum In Parvum (Latin) means “many in one.” It is a

method of increasing quality of a texture map by storing

multiple resolutions of the same image and dynamically

switching between them depending on the size and depth

of the object being textured.

Offscreen

Memory

An area of memory used to preload and place images so

that they can be quickly drawn on the screen. Offscreen

memory refers to all the memory on your ATI accelerator

card that is not taken up by the front buffer, which holds

the display screen that you see.

Pixel, Pel Picture element. Smallest addressable area of the

computer screen. Pixels on computer displays are square;

pixels on NTSC televisions have a 4:3 aspect ratio.

NexusGA.BK Page 40 20 November 1997 14:23