Abstract: A method of and system for driving a plasma display panel (PDP), which is designed to increase the amount of data processed in unit time. The method includes the steps of dividing row electrodes into at least two groups, splitting the field, and applying driving pulses to each split field with a phase difference. Also, the present invention uses a lower bit preceding scanning method where the bits of a digital picture signal are aggregated by bits of a kind from the most significant bit to the least significant bit and divided into a plurality of pairs of upper and lower bits as (lower bit, upper bit), the lower bit in each pair of bits being successively scanned, followed by a scanning of the upper bit in each pair of bits. Thus, the efficiency of the AC PDP is enhanced with the reduction in the time needed to construct the field, and readily driving a field even when the amount of data to be scanned is increased.