PC Hardware A Beginner’s Guide

and color depths of the VGA and SVGA video standards, the two most commonly used
standards today.
Over the years, several video display standards have been used. Here are a few of the
more popular ones:

 Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) This standard displayed only text

data in only one color on a solid contrasting background.

 Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) This standard provided the first color graphics

support. CGA supports 2 or 4 colors out of a 16-color palette on a 640 × 200

resolution.

 Monochrome Graphics Adapter (MGA) (a.k.a. Hercules Graphics) Developed

by Hercules Graphics Corporation, this standard incorporated graphics into

the monochrome display. It supported a 720 × 350 resolution for text and a

720 × 348 resolution for graphics, both in monochrome.

 Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) This standard improved the text and

graphics display capabilities of the CGA standard. EGA supported graphics

with a 640 × 350 resolution and up to 16 colors from a 64-color palette.

 Video Graphics Array (VGA) VGA is now the de facto graphics standard for

all monitors, video cards, and software. It supports a range of resolutions and

color depths, as shown in Table 16-5, including 640 × 480, which is commonly

known as VGA standard resolution.

 Super VGA (SVGA) SVGA is a collection of standards that defines graphics

above the VGA standard. SVGA is commonly linked to the 800 × 600 resolution

and 256 colors. Most manufacturers consider SVGA the current standard.

Of the video display standards listed above, only VGA and SVGA are in common use
today. The others were part of the video standards evolution, and each new standard was

Chapter 16: Monitors and Displays^379

Standard Name Resolution(s) Color Depth

VGA Video Graphics Array 640 × 480 16

320 × 200 256

SVGA Super VGA 800 × 600 16

1024 × 768 256

1280 × 1024 256

1600 × 1200 256

Table 16-5. Video Standards