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by Dwedit 39 days ago
The memory is organized differently, where VGA has to use 4 memory chips and spread a byte of memory among them, while MCGA just keeps it simple and uses one byte of memory per pixel.
1 comments

Technically in MCGA mode VGA doesnt spread individual pixel bits among banks, pixels are kept "whole" as bytes in banks/planes. 13h is the only mode that doesnt benefit from all of that complicated EGA inherited machinery, yet it still became the most successful and practically synonymous with VGA :)

Btw OG 1987 $595 IBM PERSONAL SYSTEM/2 DISPLAY ADAPTER https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/video/IBM%20Announcement%20... VGA card used eight 64Kx4 DRAMs https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/IBM_VGA_... to build its 4 banks. Ram Address Bus is wired in parallel (can see pin10 A7 common for 2 rows of ram chips, also pin1 OE).