User`s guide

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Bitmap A bitmap is a graphics or character representation
composed of individual pixels, arranged horizontally in
rows. A monochrome bitmap uses one bit per pixel
(bpp). Color bitmaps may use up to 32-bpp, depending
on the number of colors desired.
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 usually
includes; 256 colors (8-bpp), Thousands of colors
(16-bpp), and Millions of colors (32-bpp), and is also
measured in bits per pixel (bpp).
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.
HYPER Z
™
III A memory bandwidth saving technology that boosts
rendering performance.
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.