A drive circuit applicable to a display device includes a first signal path and a second signal path. The first signal path, configured to receive and transmit image data, includes a compression unit configured to perform a compression procedure on the image data to generate compression data; a storage unit configured to store the compression data; and a de-compression unit configured to perform a de-compression procedure on the compression data to recover the image data. The second signal path is configured to transmit the image data to the storage unit so as to bypass the compression unit, and transmit the image data received from the storage unit to a display unit so as to bypass the de-compression unit when the image data is not transmitted by the first signal path. The received image data is passed through the first signal path or the second signal path depending upon its characteristics.