Monochrome Display Adapter
The first video cards were made by IBM, and were called Monochrome Display Adapters. These video cards were only capable of a single colour, at one shade, and at only one resolution. These cards were not capable of per pixel definement, meaning that they could not change the value of a specific pixel. Rather they had to change the screen in 9 by 14 pixel blocks, and they could only change the block to draw predefined alphanumeric characters. This meant only one font, and only one character size. The video card was capable of only 720X250 resolution. These cards would fit into ISA slots. What the card was just a connector for the monitor cable. The card itself had no memory or processing capabilities of it's own. It did reserve a small area of main memory which it used as a frame buffer. The processor and main system BIOS were responsible for the image processing, and because of this the MDA was the cause of poor system performance. All output to the monitor was in digital form, as apposed to analogue form, and all digital to analog conversion was done in the monitor.

Hercules Graphics Card
Hercules also had their own primitive video card. Like the MDA, it had no memory or processor of its own, it relied on the main CPU for all of its work. It was also fixed resolution and monochrome. This card did have a limited graphics capability, but not as good as a CGA video card.

Computer Graphics Adapter
CGA video cards were introduced around the same time as the MDA and HGC video cards. What made the CGA cards unique was the ability of being able to control specific pixels, a feature called "All Point Addressable". Along with graphics capability, CGA added the the ability to use up to 16 colors, and different character sizes. Although CGA still had no processing or memory onboard, it took advantage of faster CPU's, and it eventually progressed into being able to run two different resolutions in text mode, 320 by 200 and 640 by 400. It also had the ability to scale two different text sizes, although not at the same time. It could either display character blocks of 40 column by 25 row, or 80 column by 25 row.

Enhanced Graphics Adapter
EGA video cards was released by IBM in 1984 and was considered the second generation of PC graphics. It brought about advancements such as onboard memory, and a separate onboard video BIOS. Before EGA, all BIOS information had been incorporated into the system BIOS. EGA memory was also modular, meaning some EGA cards were sold with no memory, but had the ability to be upgraded with a memory expansion board and memory modules. EGA supported up to 256k of onboard memory and were significantly faster than other video cards, but EGA still was doomed with the same graphics limitations as the older CGA standard.

Professional Graphics Adapter
PGA cards were introduced in 1984, the same time as EGA, but they sold for over 4 times as much. The reason was because PGA had it's own separate processor that would operate all video related tasks. PGA cards were designated for the high end business market. The PGA would take up a whole 3 expansion slots, and was capable of a full 60fps of 3D clipping, tasks that were impossible for the other cards. PGA never really caught on because of their steep price, and VGA alternative.

MultiColor Graphics Array
MCGA was released by IBM in 1987 as a low cost replacement to VGA. This technology never caught on because IBM was legally trying to charge royalties for anyone who used it. MCGA had a higher color depth and resolution capability then VGA, but it was compatible only with IBM's PS/2 model MCA (Micro Channel Architecture) bus systems.

8514/A
This was released in 1987 by IBM as a high end replacement to VGA.

Video Graphics Adapter
VGA was introduced the same time in 1987 as both 8514 and MCGA by IBM. VGA became an instant success because unlike the MCGA,8514 and the later XGA, VGA was capable of operating on the standard ISA bus, and so no royalties would have to be paid to IBM. This was the first technology that would send information to the monitor in analog form. This removed the restrictions of colour depth limitations, because analogue allows for a much wider frequency of colours. This created a need for the use of a RAMDAC on the video card. VGA also implemented the use of a video accelerator. This wasn't as fast as a dedicated co-processor, but it still maintained a low manufacturing cost while keeping the price down. A video accelerator would handle most of the video processing, but still needed the processor for direction and high level tasks.

Extended Graphics Array
IBM soon dropped support for the failing MCGA and 8514/A in 1990 it introduced XGA. XGA cards were build with up to 1MB of frame buffer, and were equipped with their own co-processor like the older PGA cards. This gave them better performance than VGA, but they were never very big in systems other than IBM's PS/2 computers. XGA was capable of 16 bit color at 640x480 and up to 256 colours at 1024X768 resolution. IBM later came out with an XGA2 which were a little faster, and supported higher resolutions and colour depths.

Super Video Graphics Display
This was created as an improvement over VGA, adding higher resolutions and colour depths. There was a major problem, because IBM wasn't responsible for its release, other smaller companies were. This created a lack of a standard, so although most SVGA cards were compatible with VGA monitors, and vis versa, software and programming differences started to create difficulties.

Video Electronics Standards Association SVGA
This standard was created by an organization of manufacturers as a solution to the SVGA problems. The organization soon released a VESA BIOS Extension that all video cards had to be compatible with, solving the incompatibilities programmers were having. This standard has been extended to cover every resolution and colour depth of today.