06-14-2007, 05:29 PM
06-14-2007, 06:41 PM
From Wikipedia:"A bit refers to a digit in the binary numeral system (base 2). For example, the number 1001011 is 7 bits long. The unit is sometimes abbreviated to b (but see below).Binary digits are almost always used as the basic unit of information storage and communication in digital computing and digital information theory."
06-14-2007, 08:51 PM
The above is the text book definition of bit.. however to answer your question in graphics.. you can view it as how many bits can represent a dot on the screen. 1 bit can support only one color per dot - monocrome. 4 bit is 16 colors, 8 bit is 256 colors, 32 bit millions of colors.
06-15-2007, 12:00 AM
Back when such things really mattered, the reference to 8, 16, 32 and 64 bit referred to the number of bits the CPU can process in a single cycle. A 16-bit CPU would thus, in theory, be twice as powerful as an 8-bit CPU.