ATI Technologies Nexus GA User Manual page 44

Buffers
Color Depth
Fog
Frame
Buffer
Gouraud
Shading
MIP Map
Offscreen
Memory
Pixel, Pel
Page 40
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 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.
The blending of an object with a fixed color as objects or
pixels increase distance away from the viewer.
Memory buffer used to store the image being displayed.
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.
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.
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.
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.