here is what I learned; one bench app uses 640x480x16bit mainly to reduce workloads on the GPU and CPU so that it can measure the memory bandwidth between agp, gpu/frame buffer etc, so it don't care too much about the graphics settings on the 3d control pannel since it doesn't have any higher settings to use, it did however show a slight reduction in alliasing when using custom settings in the control panel.. 3dmark responded well to the 3d control pannel, so it actually has the ability to run at higher settings but there's still this problem I am seeing with reflective surfaces in some applications that are actually set to 32bit textures, UT2004 does it, and so does 3dmark in some of the apps, it's supposed to be a lighting flare/glow/halo effect but pretty much throughout the whole effect it looks like it skips a couple vertical lines, then renders a couple, skipps a couple etc.. like an old television.