10 bit vs 8 bit monitors

Dell in sales specifications or the monitor User's Guide has never split out 10 bit monitor versus 8 bit + FRC. Dell has only showed "usage" =
6 bit = 262 thousand colors
8 bit = 16.7 million colors
10 bit = 1.07 billion colors

* Click the Start button on your desktop
* Open the Settings screen using the cog icon in the Start Menu
* Scroll down the Display screen until you locate the Advanced Display Settings link
* Click the link to open the Advanced Display Settings screen
* Select the display that you want to identify
* Check the bit depth value to identify what the monitor can support

* Right click the windows desktop
* Open the NVIDIA Control Panel
* Click Change resolution
* Under Output color depth, click the down arrow and choose the available bpc

Dell monitors with a 10 bit panel (not 8-bit + FRC) based on 3rd party test sites =
U3818DW
U3223QE
UP3218K
UP3216Q
UP3017Q
U3014
U2723QE
U2723QE
UP2718Q
UP2715K

You must have all of these to achieve a 10 bit color output:
* 10 bit monitor panel
* Video card USB-C/DP/mDP/HDMI 2.0 or greater out port
* sRGB mode
* Windows operating system
* AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro video cards and their supporting 10 bit driver
* OpenGL 10 bit output software application like Photoshop CS6

We know that the Nvidia Quadro video cards will not show 10 bit in DirectX or D3D like the consumer Nvidia GTX video cards. They will only show 10 bit in the specific OpenGL application like Photoshop CS6. So set it to 4K 60Hz, then open the OpenGL application and look for the color output setting.

Some of our panels use 8 bit + AFRC (Advance Frame Rate Control) to simulate 10 bit and generate 1.07 billion colors. As the scalar is getting 10 bits data, any calculation has to have higher precision otherwise the error will affect the accuracy. Therefore, the internal processing is 12 bits to retain the 10 bits accuracy.

Note: Nvidia consumer (example GTX 1080) video cards only support 10 bit color through DirectX driven applications. Even though the Nvidia Control Panel- Output color depth drop down will only show 8 bpc, the DirectX driven application should have an option to toggle to 10 bpc. However, OpenGL applications will still use 8 bit color

* FRC (Frame Rate Control) = temporal dithering which cycles between different shades with each new frame to simulate an intermediate shade. 8 bit panels with dithering are sometimes advertised as having 16.2 million colors. These color simulation methods are noticeable to many people and highly bothersome to some. FRC tends to be most noticeable in darker tones, while dithering appears to make the individual pixels of the LCD visible
* If your monitor panel is 10 bit (USB-C/DP/mDP/HDMI 2.0) and your video card has 8 bit, the monitor will display 8 bit
* If your monitor panel is 10 bit (USB-C/DP/mDP/HDMI 2.0) and your video card has 8 bit + FRC, the monitor will display 10 bit