what are some of the factors that affect the choice of screen resolution and colors?

Question

i dont mean person choice, but hardware/software issues would restrict the availabe screen area and color resolution. cpu, hard drive capacity, what programm etc?

Answer 1

Resolution:
This will be limited normally by the monitor's capabilities. LCDs tend not to be able to display any resolution higher than the native resolution of the panel. Resolutions below the native value are possible, but give a poor image.

CRTs are generally limited by their horizontal scan rate, so you have a trade off between resolution - higher resolutions needing a higher scan rate - and vertical refresh rate - lower refresh rates giving a lower scan rate. So a 72 kHz monitor can run 1280 by 1024 but only at 60 Hz, or 1024 by 768 at 85 Hz

It can also be limited by the amount of video memory available.

Colour depth is only affected by the video memory. 1280 by 1024 is 1.25 Mpixels. So at 4 bits (1/2 a byte) per pixel you need 0.625 MB of video memory. At 24 bits (3 bytes) per pixel you need 3.75 MB At 32 bit you need 5 MB.

Most video cards come with a lot more memory than this so that they have memory for the graphics chip to do the stuff that it does, rather than just the memory needed for the video memory map.

Answer 2

For hardware, your CPU, RAM, and Graphics memory determine how much your Windows can handle. Slower computers would have to toggle off a lot of visual affects in order to speed up performance. For example, a computer that is more than 3 years old wouldn't be able to handle Windows Vista's "AERO" graphic display. It would have to be off in order to run vista. Also, your monitor also has a maximum resolution. Old monitors would be 1024x768, most 19 inch displays now are 1280x1024 or 1600x1200.

Answer 3

VGA card / driver, Display Settings, Vedio Modes, Monitor size etc