Can someone explain in laymans terms the difference between chipsets.
8 bit
54MHz/10-Bit Video D/A Converter
108MHz/12-Bit Video D/A Converter
216MHz/12Bit Video DAC
216MHz/14Bit Video DAC

The number of bits tells you how precise each measurement is, higher is better. The number of MHz tells you how fast the sampling rate is, higher is faster.

a 10 bit chip will produce 1 billion colors. A 12 bit chip is 58 billion i believe. Where can i find more info like this?

this is the type of info i am looking for...... Anyone?

anyone? Buler? Buler?

boy i thought for sure i would get something from you guys.

What part of limelightsystems and or Thon you did not get ?

That is basicaly it..!!!!!! at the end of the day it all boils down to how good is the firmware - After all, if you buy an AMD 64 Bit processor and run it on Windows it will be runing in 32 Bit format...!

In my opinion manufactures throw this numbers around to see how many suckers they can catch... very few are truly running the processors at full tilt and there is other factors to consider - some rearly specify - "like RAM or Flash capasity and front BUS...!"

The first number in the specs is the clock frequency of the DAC. This has nothing to do with how fast the firmware runs. At this point firmware isn't doing anything.

Think of the clock frequency as the fastest rate at which the DAC can put out a value for a pixel. For example... If we wanted to do a full progressive 1080p, we'd have 1920x1080 pixels. That's 2,073,600 pixels to update. We need a frame every 60th of a second, or think of it as 60 frames per second. So 60 frames x 2,073,600 = 124,416,000 pixels per second, roughly 125MHz clock rate.

Note that this doesn't include time for vertical retrace, and horizontal refresh. When you look at the standards involved, and the time required for these events, the clock rate has to be even faster. If I remember right, the overheard for NTSC is about 25%, so the clock rate has to be 25% faster than the bit rate you would expect. I'm not sure what this number is for ATSC, and I'd have to look it up. The 216 MHz DAC's allow for high monitor resolutions at refresh rates of 100Hz and higher. Such DAC's are commonly used on computer video cards. Higher refresh rates help reduce eyestrain. This does not mean that a faster DAC than needed for a given refresh rate and resolution buys increased performance, it just helps to empty your wallet.

The second number tells you how many colors the DAC can represent. This is the color depth. The number of bits used as an exponent for 2 tells you the color depth. For example, 2 to the 8th power, 2^8= 256 colors.

2^8 = 256 colors
2^10 = 1024 colors
2^12 = 4096 colors
2^14 = 16,384 colors
2^16 = 65,536 colors

Hope this helps.

Thank you thank you