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Shared Video Memory

G

GizmoFreak

Golden Member
Are there any opinions on integrated video with shared video memory on laptops? The new Dell D500/500m laptops sport this as well as many others, including the Fujitsu S2000 notebooks.

Obviously gaming is out of the question, but if you don't game, is there any major drawback to it?

One thing is that a portion of your system RAM will be cannibalized for video and will degrade overall performance a bit. But if you have sufficient RAM (512MB or so), it shouldn't be too big a deal.

But will your screen be dimmer? DVD playback worse? Any other tangible deficiencies?
 
screen brightness is a power issue, and LCD issue, independent of the rest of the system.
you dont want to game with shared memory, this also means your video chip is not really meant for gaming
most people dont need 512MB of RAM for a laptop because it is a laptop. those who need the power will not be cheaping out on a system with shared memory.
shared memory laptops are usually low end and cheaper. OR lightweight.
 
Also, will having an integrated video card improve battery life? I've heard those high end laptop graphics cards are power guzzlers.

Basically, I'm trying to compare the Dell 600m/D600 laptops to the 500m/D500 laptops. They seem to be essentially the same laptops except for the integrated video.

As stated above, gaming is not an issue, so forgetting gaming.... are there any major deficiencies/minuses to the integrated video.
 
Integrated video will save some power compared to non-integrated of the same calibre.

As far as a non-gamer should be concerned, the integrated video will cause a slight system slowdown because of using main memory, but not much. I doubt you would notice a difference.

IMO, with laptops, unless your company/parent is paying for it, get the cheapest one that willl do what you need. Damn things obsolete even quicker than desktops, and you can't do anything about it other than (sometimes) upgrade memory or HD.
 
If you won't be gaming, just use the integrated. It will slow you down just a tad as mentioned above, but you will probably even be able to play some of the newer games. I am using 64mb of RAM for my integrated right now with 512mb total system mem and I can play every game I've tried so far. As far as DVD as things like that goes, it will be fine. You don't need a $300 video card to watch movies.
 
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