Comparison between common display resolutions, including several resolutions defined for Super VGA byVESA BIOS Extensions
In the late 1980s, after the release ofIBM's VGA, third-party manufacturers began making graphics cards based on its specifications with extended capabilities. As these cards grew in popularity, they began to be referred to as "Super VGA".
This term was not an official standard, but a shorthand for enhanced VGA cards which had become common by 1988.[4] The first cards that explicitly used the term wereGenoa Systems's SuperVGA and SuperVGA HiRes in 1987.[5]
Super VGA cards broke compatibility with the IBM VGA standard, requiring software developers to provide specificdisplay drivers and implementations for each card their software could operate on. Initially, the heavy restrictions this placed on software developers slowed the uptake of Super VGA cards, which motivatedVESA to produce a unifying standard, theVESA BIOS Extensions (VBE), first introduced in 1989,[7] to provide a common software interface to all cards implementing the VBE specification.[8][9]
Eventually, Super VGA graphics adapters supported innumerable modes.
^Ferraro, Richard F. (1990).Programmer's Guide to the EGA and VGA Cards (2nd ed.).Addison-Wesley. p. 596.ISBN0-201-57025-4.Nearly all VGA cards manufactured today exceed the VGA standard [...] in some significant way. These new and improved VGAs have been labeled Super VGAs, Extended VGAs or Advanced VGAs.
^"Graphics Cards". DOS Days. Retrieved2025-02-16.VGA was the last IBM graphics standard to which the majority of PC clone manufacturers conformed, [...] It was officially followed by IBM's Extended Graphics Array (XGA) standard, but was effectively superseded by numerous slightly different extensions to VGA made by clone manufacturers, collectively known as Super VGA.
