Laptops and shared memory for video

[Dan Ritter]

On Fri, Sep 18, 2009 at 01:02:16AM -0400, David Kramer wrote:
> OK, enough bitching.  I'm looking at moderately powerful laptops.  She
> doesn't do gaming, but heavy browser/chat/email/word/photo editing.  I

None of that is heavy CPU or graphics usage. Most non-netbook
laptops can do all that and play HD video at the same time.

> I've always felt video cards that steal main memory were "icky".  If my
> laptop comes with 3GB RAM, I want to be able to use 3GB RAM.  It also
> seems very inefficient to me to jump across different busses to
> read/write video RAM from the video card.  But there are quite a few
> laptops with "dynamic video memory" that are otherwise acceptable.
> 
> Am I being too picky?  Is this a non-issue, as long as the system has
> 3GB or 4GB?

Unless she's a video gamer, this is a non-issue. Even laptop RAM
is cheap, so don't let the fact that it only has 1 or 2 GB
dissuade you -- buy 4GB from NewEgg immediately.

-dsr-

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