How many colors can a 32-bit computer display?

Answer 1

The 32-bit color offered by many current operating systems is actually 24-bits of color with 8-bits allocated to an alpha channel or data. This results in a color depth of 16,777,216 different colors. It is said that the human eye can only distinguish between 10 million different colors.

Answer 2

The "bittedness" of a computer has no direct correlation to the number of colors a computer can display. This is dependent on many factors, including the graphics card, the monitor, and functionality of the operating system itself.

Generally speaking, any computer, depending on the graphics card and monitor, is physically capable of displaying color in the following depths:

1-bit color (2 colors)

2-bit color (4 colors)

4-bit color (16 colors)

8-bit color (256 colors)

16-bit color (65535 colors)

24-bit color (16.7 million colors)

Most "32-bit" displays do not display 4.2 billion colors, like you would expect. Instead, they display 24-bit color and use the remaining 8 bits to signal alpha transparency or Z-buffer data. Most 64-bit computers still use 24-bit or 32-bit color. Since the human eye cannot distinguish anywhere close to the 18.4 quintillion colors a 64-bit display would provide, a 64-bit display is unlikely to ever be used.