Term of the Moment
assembly language
Definition: display standards
The hardware interfaces for computer monitors. The same display standard must be in the graphics card (display adapter) and the monitor, both of which very often support two or three technologies. For example, to accommodate early PCs, a VGA port is sometimes found in a monitor along with the more up-to-date HDMI and DisplayPort interfaces. Following are the standards since the advent of the IBM PC in 1981, and except for VGA, all of them send digital signals to the monitor. See screen resolution.
Graphics Card Outputs
Monitor Inputs
Year ---- Maximum ----- Intro Type Resolution Colors 2008 DisplayPort 7680x4320 16M D 2002 HDMI 4096x2160 16M D 1999 DVI 2560x1600 16M D 1987 VGA 1920x1080 256+ A 1984 EGA 640x200 16 D 1981 CGA 640x200 2 D A = analog D = digital
These are the output ports on two graphics cards. The top card was available when DVI was becoming popular and VGA was still very prominent. The bottom card came out years later, and VGA was omitted.
Monitors typically have several inputs to accommodate different generations of PCs.