Shared memory & Vista

[Guest]

I'm considering buying a Toshiba A135-S4487. The notebook comes with Vista
Home Premium and 256mb of shared/integrated video memory.

Is buying a laptop with Vista and shared video memory a bad idea? Is this
enough video memory (considering it's "shared")?

My reason for asking is that, while I'm not a big gamer, I may want to pick
up a strategy game (Civ IV or something like it) and don't want to have
massive system slowdown because I don't have enough video memory.

 

[Dustin Harper]

The shared memory is alright, slower, but not overly slow. It should
work with Civ4 or Age of Empires. Beware though, that since it is
shared, it does take from the regular system RAM.

Most of the slowdown would be from the actual video chipset.

 

[JW]

I have Vista Aero running in 128MB of shared memory with an Intel chipset
and is very fast. I did, however, have to incease my main memory to more
then 512MB

 

[Guest]

I'm considering buying a Toshiba A135-S4487. The notebook comes with Vista
Home Premium and 256mb of shared/integrated video memory.

Is buying a laptop with Vista and shared video memory a bad idea? Is this
enough video memory (considering it's "shared")?

My reason for asking is that, while I'm not a big gamer, I may want to pick
up a strategy game (Civ IV or something like it) and don't want to have
massive system slowdown because I don't have enough video memory.

Shared video memory is not so bad by itself, but
it depends how much total RAM has this laptop.
The shared video memory is subtracted from the total, and remaining RAM
should be at least 512 MB for Vista - the more RAM, the more fun.

--PA