Screen modes
The Amiga was capable of displaying various screen resolutions. All monitors and TV's of that time had a picture aspect ratio of 4:3 but the pixel aspect ratio varied greately. The ratios in the lists are pixel aspect ratios and the are rounded to the nearest neighbour. In reality PAL pixels are a tiny bit wider than they are tall (16:15) and NTSC pixels are a bit taller than they are wide (8:9).
OCS (Original Chip Set - released 1985)
The hardware that was used in the first generation of Amigas still very close to the original concept of the Amiga being used as a video games console. For that reason the screen modes were tied very closely to the television standards NTSC and PAL that were in use at that time. This also meant that the screen modes varied depending on what type of Amiga you had and where you had it.
LowRes
320×200 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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LowRes Laced
320×400 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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HiRes
640×200 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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HiRes Laced
640×400 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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ECS (Enhanced Chip Set - released 1990)
The enhanced chip set was released with several small improvements over the original chip set.
New screen modes were added to support higher resolutions offered by multisync monitors but at the same time sacrificing color depth.
Technical limitations also limited the usefulness of many of these new modes as most had either very extreme pixel aspect ratios or were limited to very few colors.
The reason for this was possibly the attempt to squeeze addition features out of the original chip set design without changing to much on the chip.
Super-HiRes
1280×200 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Super-HiRes Laced
1280×400 @ 60Hz (NTSC)
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Productivity
640×480 @ 60Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Productivity Laced
640×960 @ 60Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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10Hz
1024×800 @ 10Hz (NTSC)
4 bit color depth (16 colors) |
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15Hz
1024×800 @ 15Hz (NTSC)
4 bit color depth (16 colors) |
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LowRes
320×200 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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LowRes Laced
320×400 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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HiRes
640×200 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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HiRes Laced
640×400 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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Super-HiRes
1280×200 @ 73Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Super-HiRes Laced
1280×400 @ 73Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Euro72 |
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Productivity
640×400 @ 70Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Productivity Laced
640×800 @ 70Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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HiRes
400×300 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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HiRes Laced
400×600 @ 73Hz
12 bit color depth (4096 colors) |
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Super-HiRes
800×300 @ 73Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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Super-HiRes Laced
800×600 @ 73Hz
6 bit color depth (64 colors) |
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AGA (Advanced Graphics Architecture - released 1992)
The AGA chipset was the first real improvement over the original chipset. Further screen modes where added, the color palette was extended to 24bit and resolutions with up to 256 colors. All resolutions could now be used with all color modes.
LowRes
320×200 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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LowRes No Flicker
320×400 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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LowRes Laced
320×800 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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HiRes
640×200 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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HiRes No Flicker
640×400 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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HiRes Laced
640×800 @ 60Hz
24 bit color depth (16,777,216 colors) |
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