Resolutions Ratio

[QuantumSlip]

One thing I've always wonder is why monitors have 1280x1024 as a standard resolution instead of 1280x960. The next one up, 1600x1200, is of the typical 4:3 ratio. Same thing with that new widescreen dell fp, which has a ratio of 16:10 instead of typical 16:9. Was there some special reason to use 1280x1024 instead of 1280x960?

 

[BFG10K]

1280x1024 is left over from the legacy days and it's also used for LCDs. CRTs should use 4:3 ratios (1280x960).

 

[amol]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
1280x1024 is left over from the legacy days and it's also used for LCDs. CRTs should use 4:3 ratios (1280x960).

i have a crappy CRT in the other room that does 1280x1024 on a 4:3 physical screen

LCDs that are 1280x1024 have a physical size of 5:4

 

[BFG10K]

i have a crappy CRT in the other room that does 1280x1024 on a 4:3 physical screen

Almost every CRT that can run 1280x960 can also run 1280x1024. Of course running the latter warps the image.

 

[Auric]

Legacy, and mayhaps simpler to manufacturer since one dimension is shared with the next smallest panel (1024x768).

 

[Peter]

Legacy, yes. The historical reason of why 1024 is in how the cards were made back then. You'd put two megabytes of RAM on to get past the 1024 horizontal threshold, next step was decided to be 256 more (eight bytes), 1280. Now, for RAM access efficiency, you'd align screen lines with DRAM pages, do 2^N bytes per line. So you're using 2048 bytes per line, not 1280.
Now, we gots two megabytes which happens to be 2048x1024 bytes, meaning that if we max it out, we can do 1024 lines from that.

No-one thought of aspect ratio issues, so the 1280x1024 resolution went on sale - and because it was IBM who did it, it quickly became a standard.