GRAPHICS ADAPTER

The hardware inside a computer that enables the computer to display graphics on the screen. In contrast to Mac computers, PCs have a larger variety of graphics adapters that complicate compatibility between different PCs. In the early days, the PC standard was the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) that, by today's standards, is low resolution and low in color combinations. This was replaced by EGA Enhanced Graphics Adapter and then VGA Video Graphics Array having a standard 480 lines vertical and 640 pixels horizontal resolution. Today Super VGA extensions (to at least 600 lines vertical and 800 pixels horizontal) are the choice among most PC users for whom graphics displays are important. Be aware, however, that there are different Super VGA resolutions and monitor options that can affect the compatibility of graphics images among different PCs. Also be aware that LCD panels are not able to handle the higher resolutions of cathode ray monitors; therefore, images may not look as good during class delivery as they did on a monitor during the authoring process. The top-rated graphics adapters at the end of 1994 are Impression Plus (Rank 1) with 4Mb of video RAM from Matrox (514-685-2630), Imagine-128 (Rank 2) with 4Mb of video RAM from Number Nine (800-438-6463), and Graphics Pro Turbo (Rank 3) with 4Mb of video RAM from ATI (905-882-2600) according to PC Computing, December 1994, p. 140. A good company with computer to video interfaces is Extron . (See also AB style switches and LCD )