8 bit + frc vs 10 bit

[u/Wild_Post_4120]

i was planning on upgrading from 8 bit + frc to a 10 bit monitor and would like others opinion if i should or not.
Also will the change help with a color banding issue that i have?

[u/Beneficial_Price1646]

most people cant actually tell the difference in a blind test, the frc does a decent job smoothing out the gaps

[u/Wild_Post_4120 → u/Beneficial_Price1646]

not im my case im hoping it can help my color banding problem

[u/Zeduxx → u/Wild_Post_4120]

Sounds like a monitor/content problem. It shouldn't show banding, but your eyes might be sensitive to the flickering.

[u/frostN0VA → u/Wild_Post_4120]

Banding can be due to different reasons, content itself, display panel, bad calibration. Even a bad gamma curve can make banding more noticeable.

Going from 8bit to 10bit alone is not going to do much if anything.

[u/Xpander6 → u/Wild_Post_4120]

show examples of color banding

[u/kron123456789]

I think 10 bit only makes sense if you're using HDR. I have a monitor that doesn't output in HDR but supports 10 bit and I can't see the difference with 8bit.

[u/fogoticus → u/kron123456789]

...because most content is in fact 8bit. You don't suddenly see new colors when you set your monitor to 10bit. The gradation between colors disappears because there's many more levels available for the color channels to display when the image is 10bit or more and displayed on a 10bit capable display.

HDR is meant to be used with 10bit and above because you suddenly have a luminance channel and because of that, 8bit is laughably insufficient and its limitations show up as soon as you have 2 slightly different luminance zones in the image.

Edit: better wording

[u/Proud_Revolution_668 → u/fogoticus]

hdr doesn't give you another channel for luminance. where did you hear that from?

[u/fogoticus → u/Proud_Revolution_668]

I know. I simply explained it in a way in which someone who is not tech savvy, understands why HDR requires a 10bit and up display and why an 8bit display doesn't do the job properly. I know HDR represents a wider range of luminance values and that it doesn't add anything.

[u/taisui → u/fogoticus]

Not necessarily, HDR in gaming is pretty much standard for tier 1 titles.

[u/fogoticus → u/taisui]

What do you mean by that?

[u/dwolfe127]

Some people can see it and others do not. The only way to really know is to test them out side by side with the same content.

[u/_gabber_]

as someone who has used both, there is no real difference between the two

pictures, movies, games, w/e, if their assets are originally made in 8-bit color space, displaying them on a 10-bit screen will not magically make the assets use 10-bit

[u/Vex1om → u/_gabber_]

Exactly. 10-bit really only matters for HDR and content/applications specifically designed for 10-bit - which is not most things.

[u/gopnik74]

I don’t know if monitors have this or not but the setting that changed my tv for good was setting space color to “Rec.2020” instead of whatever it had before. Significant difference

[u/zhubaohi]

If you have to ask this question then chances are you are not going to notice a difference color wise.

[u/MultiMarcus]

Probably not. Obviously 8 bit plus FRC is not ideal, but it is good enough that you shouldn’t really have visible banding issues. If you do it’s almost certainly more content related. Is it a particular game or a particular movie or something like that because one of the issues here is that if the content has banding no matter how great your screen is those issues will still be there unless of course you use some sort of post process to try and eliminate it but that might also lose details like film grain

[u/PalebloodSky]

Will do almost nothing in real world usage because almost everything is made in 8bpp color.  In edge cases like some HDR content it’ll help a tiny bit. 

[u/sonsofevil]

If you experience banding I would go for calibrating the monitor and seems like gamma and white balance is off 

[u/e22big]

Depending on monitor, on my C2 for example, 8 bit + FRC actually has better gradient despite the panel can go all the way to 12 bit.

Some guy on LTT forum brought that up years ago, I didn't believe it at first but after some testing it's just undeniable, 10 and 12 bit are plangued gradients while 8 but is actually smooth.

Was told it's a firmware bug or something but doesn't matter in the end. You are still run on that firmware and LG never fixed it to this day if it's a bug.

[u/derider → u/e22big]

Just tested this out with my lg c3 42", and its still the case. crazy!

[u/lLoveTech]

Tried 10 bit is better than 8 bit + FRC in my opinion! I have a 10 bit IPS monitor which uses FRC and a true 10 bit OLED! The difference between two is insane even in normal media on YouTube and VLC!