This is a list of notable RGB hardware color palettes used on 16-bit computers, which were primarily manufactured from 1985 to 1995. Due to mixed-bit architectures, the n-bit distinction is not always a strict categorization.

| Sample image | Color test chart | 12-bit, 4096-color palette | 15-bit, 32768-color palette

12-bit, 4096-color palette 0x00 0x01 0x02 0x03 0x04 0x05 0x06 0x07 0x08 0x09 0x0A 0x0B 0x0C 0x0D 0x0E 0x0F15-bit, 32768-color palette 0x 00 0x 01 0x 02 0x 03 0x 04 0x 05 0x 06 0x 07 0x 08 0x 09 0x 0A 0x 0B 0x 0C 0x 0D 0x 0E 0x 0F 0x 10 0x 11 0x 12 0x 13 0x 14 0x 15 0x 16 0x 17 0x 18 0x 19 0x 1A 0x 1B 0x 1C 0x 1D 0x 1E 0x 1F

Atari

ST series The Atari ST series has a digital-to-analog converter with 3-bits (eight levels) per RGB channel, featuring a 9-bit RGB palette (512 colors). Depending on the (proprietary) monitor type attached, it displays either 320×200 with 16-colors or 640×200 with 4-colors with a color monitor (or TV), or the high resolution 640×400 black and white mode with a monochrome monitor.

|2 colors |4 colors |16 colors |9-bit, 512-color palette

2-color (monochrome) mode is either black on white or white on black.

The STE, Mega STE and TT have a digital-to-analog converter with 4-bits (sixteen levels) per RGB channel, featuring a 12-bit RGB palette (4096 colors) similar to the Commodore Amiga.

TT 030 The Atari TT also has 4-bits per RGB channel, for a 12-bit RGB palette (4096 colors) and in addition to the ST's modes, can use any 2 colors in 640x400 1 bit per pixel mode and 16 colours at 640x480. It also has a 320x480 256 color mode and a 1280x960 monochrome mode. The 256 color mode can either use a palette of colors picked from the 4096, or 256 shades of grey.

Falcon 030 The Atari Falcon 030 uses a 6-bits per channel, 64 level digital-to-analog converter to give an 18-bit RGB palette (262,144 colors), from which can be selected any 2, 4, 16, or 256 at a time. It also has a 16-bit (RGB565) high-color mode able to display any of 65536 colors, though this is somewhat performance limiting.

|2 colors |4 colors |16 colors |256 colors

Commodore

Amiga OCS The Original Chip Set (OCS) of the Commodore Amiga features a 12-bit RGB, 4,096-color palette. As the Amiga Copper programmable graphics coprocessor is capable of changing color lookup table entries on the fly during display, in practice the number of distinct colors visible on-screen may exceed static color lookup table sizes documented here.

5-bit The picture is divided in a series of bit planes, between 1 and 6 for horizontal resolutions of 320 (or up to 384 with overscan), and between 1 and 4 for horizontal resolutions of 640 (or up to 768 with overscan). For either horizontal resolution, the vertical resolution is either 200 (or up to 240 with overscan), or 400 (or up to 480 with overscan) if interlaced, for NTSC-compatible video modes; or 256 (or up to 288 with overscan), or 512 (or up to 576 with overscan) if interlaced, for PAL-compatible video modes. The color lookup table has up to 32 entries. So the different indexed color modes are from 1 to 5 bits pixel depth, 2-, 4-, 8-, 16- or 32-color out of 4,096.

|2 colors |4 colors |8 colors |16 colors |32 colors

6-bit When the sixth bit-plane is used, two extra color modes can be set: Extra Half-Brite (EHB) and Hold-And-Modify (HAM).

In the EHB mode, when the sixth bit is set to on for any given pixel, the display hardware halves the brightness of said pixel. This allows the Amiga to display 64 colors instead of the standard 32, with the caveat being that the 32 extra colors cannot be arbitrarily selected, and must be darker versions of those already being displayed on screen

In the HAM mode, the two higher bits of the 6-bits pixels are used as a four state command. Three of the states changes only the red, green or blue component of the pixel respect of the precedent in the scan line, and hold the other two RGB components. The new value for the modified color component is in the four lower bits. The remaining command state forces the pixel value to be one of the 16 first values of the palette, whose indice is in the four lower bits of the pixel. So it is very important to have a well selected palette, or the color will spread easily among consecutive pixels in the scan line of the image. This mode can display all of the 4,096 colors simultaneously.

|64 colors (EHB mode) |4096 colors (HAM mode)

Amiga ECS

Amigas with the newer ECS chipset have the same color capabilities as the original OCS machines but have some screen resolution upgrades.

Amiga AGA Amigas with the AGA chipset could display 256 colors at once out of a 24-bit RGB palette, or 18-bit at once in HAM mode.

|256 colors

Apple

Apple IIGS Apple IIGS, along with full compatible graphic modes with the Apple II, features a custom Video Graphics Chip (VGC)BYTE.com which supports a 12-bit RGB, 4,096-color palette. It has an extended set of 320×200 and 640×200 graphic modes, (called Super High-Res modes by Apple) with different (and a bit complex) color modes: 320×200 with 16 palettes of 16 selected colors out of 4,096 each. Every single scan line can be assigned to one of the sixteen palettes, so it can have up to 16×16=256 different simultaneous colors (although some common colors like black and white are usually shared among the different palettes, giving fewer than 256 total different colors). The most simple way to use this mode is having a unique 16-color selection for the entire screen and assign it to all scan lines. Here are shown the sample image both using a single shared palette and using all the 16 palettes (in this case, by dividing the image into 16 strips):

640×200 with 16 palettes of 8 selected colors out of 4,096 each. Every single scan line can be assigned to one of the sixteen palettes, so it can have up to 8×16=128 different simultaneous colors (usually less due to shared colors). In a single scan line, even column pixels can have one of the first four colors of the line's assigned palette, and odd column pixels one of the last four colors of the eight. The most simple way to use this mode is having a unique 8-color selection for the entire screen with four duplicate colors (the same to both even and odd pixel columns) and assign it to all scan lines. Here are shown the sample image both with a single shared custom 4-color palette and with a single 8-color palette (black, blue, yellow, white, black (again), red, green, white (again)) to produce 13 dithered-by-hardware colors, ("dark blue", "dark yellow", "gray", "dark red", "magenta", "orange", "light red", "dark green", "cyan", "lime green", "light green", "light blue", and "light yellow") plus pure black and white. The last was the Apple IIGS Finder default mode and palette.

Also, along with the one of 16 palettes, to each scan line the Apple IIGS VGC is able to assign individual 320 or 640 horizontal resolution independently. The closest output would be:

0x0 0x1 0x2 0x3 0x4 0x5 0x6 0x7 0x8 0x9 0xA 0xB 0xC 0xD 0xE 0xF

Sharp

X68000 The X68000, released in 1987, uses a 16-bit RGB palette. All 65,536 colors can be displayed simultaneously in resolutions up to 512x512, or 16 out of 65,536 colors at the highest resolution of 1024x1024.

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IBM PC/AT and compatible systems

EGA The Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) supports all CGA modes and add three more: two 320×200 and 640×200 graphic modes, both with the full CGA 16-color palette (intended to be used with the same "digital RGB" CGA color monitor of 200 scan lines) and an extra 640×350 graphic mode with 16 colors chosen from a 6-bit RGB (64 colors) palette for what IBM then called an "analog RGB" type monitor.Richard Wilton, Programmer's Guide to PC & PS/2 VIDEO SYSTEMS, 1987, Microsoft Press.

The word analog means here that the RGB signals can have more than the bare two possible levels 0 and 1; (as the so-called —by IBM— "digital RGB" CGA monitor type has) despite its name, colors are produced digitally, so there exist binary (quantized) steps for every primary RGB signal (two bits, four levels per primary, in this case). Thus, the EGA signal from the computer to this kind of monitor had two wires for each primary red, green and blue. IBM developed a true analog video interface later, for the more advanced MCGA and VGA display adapters and monitors (and earlier, for the Professional Graphics Controller, announced simultaneously with the EGA) which are unrelated to (and incompatible with) the EGA "analog" monitors; see the next section.

Some early EGA cards shipped with only 64 KB of video memory—the nominal was 128 KB, up to a maximum of 256 KB to allow more screen pages in memory. With only 64 KB, the EGA 640×350 graphic mode provides only four colors. 4-color 640×350 graphics was never a proper mode by itself (merely a conditional downgrade of the 640×350 16-color mode) and therefore was not popular.

Monochrome "analog" monitors also existed for EGA. The colors are then mapped internally to the correspondent luminance gray, (the sum of the 30% of the red signal, the 59% of the green and the 11% of the blue) giving a 16-shades from a 64-grayscale palette. "Positive" class monitors inverts the signal, providing that the default EGA colors for text modes (black background and white foreground) displays reversed, (white background and black foreground) as if were a printed document.

16-color CGA16-color EGAEGA on monochrome monitorEGA palette

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: center" |+ EGA color palette |- style="color:white;" | style="color:white; background:#000; width:3pc;" title="#000"| 0x00 | style="color:white; background:#005; width:3pc;" title="#005"| 0x01 | style="color:white; background:#500; width:3pc;" title="#500"| 0x02 | style="color:white; background:#505; width:3pc;" title="#505"| 0x03 | style="color:white; background:#050; width:3pc;" title="#050"| 0x04 | style="color:white; background:#055; width:3pc;" title="#055"| 0x05 | style="color:white; background:#550; width:3pc;" title="#550"| 0x06 | style="color:white; background:#555; width:3pc;" title="#555"| 0x07 |- style="color:white;" | style="color:white; background:#00a; width:3pc;" title="#00A"| 0x08 | style="color:white; background:#00f; width:3pc;" title="#00F"| 0x09 | style="color:white; background:#50a; width:3pc;" title="#50A"| 0x0A | style="color:white; background:#50f; width:3pc;" title="#50F"| 0x0B | style="color:white; background:#05a; width:3pc;" title="#05A"| 0x0C | style="color:white; background:#05f; width:3pc;" title="#05F"| 0x0D | style="color:white; background:#55a; width:3pc;" title="#55A"| 0x0E | style="color:white; background:#55f; width:3pc;" title="#55F"| 0x0F |- | style="color:white; background:#a00; width:3pc;" title="#A00"| 0x10 | style="color:white; background:#a05; width:3pc;" title="#A05"| 0x11 | style="color:black; background:#f00; width:3pc;" title="#F00"| 0x12 | style="color:black; background:#f05; width:3pc;" title="#F05"| 0x13 | style="color:white; background:#a50; width:3pc;" title="#A50"| 0x14 | style="color:white; background:#a55; width:3pc;" title="#A55"| 0x15 | style="color:black; background:#f50; width:3pc;" title="#F50"| 0x16 | style="color:black; background:#f55; width:3pc;" title="#F55"| 0x17 |- | style="color:white; background:#a0a; width:3pc;" title="#A0A"| 0x18 | style="color:white; background:#a0f; width:3pc;" title="#A0F"| 0x19 | style="color:black; background:#f0a; width:3pc;" title="#F0A"| 0x1A | style="color:black; background:#f0f; width:3pc;" title="#F0F"| 0x1B | style="color:black; background:#a5a; width:3pc;" title="#A5A"| 0x1C | style="color:black; background:#a5f; width:3pc;" title="#A5F"| 0x1D | style="color:black; background:#f5a; width:3pc;" title="#F5A"| 0x1E | style="color:black; background:#f5f; width:3pc;" title="#F5F"| 0x1F |- | style="color:black; background:#0a0; width:3pc;" title="#0A0"| 0x20