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What good is video memory on older laptops?

S

Sniper82

Lifer
Friend has a older laptop with only 2.5mb video memory or something. What exactly is it's purpose since 3d games ain't involved?
 
Well, what is the screen resolution and color depth desired? To run 24 bit color at 1280 * 1024 you need 4MB.
Is he happy running 16 bit color? If so, no more video memory needed.
 
Originally posted by: Green Man
Well, what is the screen resolution and color depth desired? To run 24 bit color at 1280 * 1024 you need 4MB.
Is he happy running 16 bit color? If so, no more video memory needed.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

Laptops in the past, were oriented towards work - not games. Work may include quite a bit of graphics processing and video work. Example - my laptop is my traveling darkroom for serious digital imagery. I don't have time to play games, but I do enjoy a movie now and then onthe road. 🙂

 
When video uses system memory it uses a % of the whole system memory bandwidth. The older the memory technology was, the lower the total bandwidth available for everything and the larger the percentage of that used for the video (all else being equal which it obviously wasn't with different resolutions and such but it was still relevant the moment we went from console interfaces to GUIs).

About a decade ago this was really significant, on practially all motherboards (including desktops) with integrated video, they did use onboard memory to combat this.
 
Originally posted by: corkyg
Originally posted by: Green Man
Well, what is the screen resolution and color depth desired? To run 24 bit color at 1280 * 1024 you need 4MB.
Is he happy running 16 bit color? If so, no more video memory needed.
Click to expand...

:thumbsup:

Laptops in the past, were oriented towards work - not games. Work may include quite a bit of graphics processing and video work. Example - my laptop is my traveling darkroom for serious digital imagery. I don't have time to play games, but I do enjoy a movie now and then onthe road. 🙂
Click to expand...



I'm not sure if I was entirely clear.
4MB is required for 1280 * 1024 24 bit color desktop resolution.
I'm not talking about games or 3d.

Just wanted to clear that up.

1280 * 1024 = 1310720 pixels
1310720 * 24 bits = 31457280 bits
31457280 / 8 = 3932160 bytes
3932160 ~ 4MB just to display the desktop.

kk
 
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