That says nothing about how densely the pixels are clustered. I am sure some of you already know that the term 'resolution' isn’t correct when it’s used to refer to the number of pixels on a screen. Let’s look at what today’s terminology is, and what it means. However, this also means that there are a lot more options to choose from, with something to suit almost everyone’s preferences. With the advent of high definition video and the increased popularity of the 16:9 aspect ratio (I’ll explain more about aspect ratios in a bit) selecting a screen resolution is not the simple affair it once was.

For the sake of nostalgia, here’s a look at a once well-known CGA display.

Regardless of the capability of your monitor, you’d still have to choose from one of the few options available through your graphics card’s drivers. CGA was first, followed by EGA and VGA–color graphics adapter, enhanced graphics adapter, video graphics array. The color graphics technology was first developed by IBM. In this article I would like to take you through a bit of history and explain all the important concepts.

Today we have lots of options when it comes to displays, their quality and the supported resolutions. As time went on, you could choose better video cards and better monitors as well. Windows came with a few preset options, and to get higher resolution or more colors (or both) you would install a driver for your video card. In days gone by, screen resolution (also called display resolution) wasn’t much of an issue.

1080p on 720p monitor