Does video memory matter more for photos or for games?

[Felecha]

Looking at specs for a new laptop for my wife. She does the publications work for the small private school where she works, all self taught. She uses PageMaker and Adobe Photoshop Album.

I want to get a good size hard drive - TONS of photos to store, and a good big CPU and good RAM.

But video card - does she need an extra boost there? Or does that only really matter for "moving" display needs, like games etc?

 

[ther00kie16]

Yea, video card's really only necessary for games and some professional work. Integrated graphics is probably good enough.

 

[DSF]

When you're working on large images in publishing programs they're stored in system RAM as far as I know, not video RAM. VRAM is more for things like textures on 3D objects in games.

Quantity of RAM is going to be much more important than speed of RAM, by the way. (In other words, if you have the choice between 4GB of DDR2-667 and 2GB of DDR2-800, go with the 4GB without a doubt.)