Wide Extended Graphics Array

What Does Wide Extended Graphics Array Mean?

Wide Extended Graphics Array (WXGA) is a graphics standard that has a display resolution of 1366×768 pixels and a wide screen aspect ratio of 16:9. This is the wide screen version of the famous XGA standard of 1024×768 pixels with an aspect ratio of 4:3. The vertical resolution of XGA was kept, and 342 pixels were added to the horizontal resolution, which resulted in the odd-looking value of 1366.

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Wide Extended Graphics Arrayis also known as Wide XGA.

Techopedia Explains Wide Extended Graphics Array

Although WXGA contains more pixels than XGA, it did not really need a major signaling change apart from needing a faster pixel clock, which graphics processors were already capable of. This meant that no major technology change was required, and display manufacturers only had to cut a slightly wider LCD panel to accommodate the change and to have a wider screen, which was gaining popularity.

Other variants included 1360×768, which provided a significantly lower memory requirement from over 1 MB (1024.5 KB per channel) for the 1366 variant to just 1020 KB, which is a value just slightly lower than the full 1024 KB of a whole megabyte. This meant that VRAM chips used in smaller resolution displays can still be used to keep manufacturing costs lower because it fits exactly into that chip category rather than having to move to the next larger value chips of 2 MB or 4 MB, which cost more and produce only a very slight and unnoticeable difference in pixels.

In 2006, WXGA was the most popular resolution for LCD televisions, but in 2013 and later it got relegated to low-end screens and bedroom televisions as the industry shifted to Full HD resolution of 1920×1080 and beyond toward Quad HD (4k).

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…