can clarify the issue about the difference between pixels and texels. They are close to the same, one for the screen and one for textures. The difference is that depending on the size of the polygon being textured, a texel may span more than one pixel, or the other way around. The texture may get either larger or smaller than it is. 256 pixels are just that, but 256 texels might be all 1024 pixels on tghe screen. In memory, I'm not too sure, but they should be stored kind of the same since they are similar.