must I get a dedicated video card?

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Guest

I am looking to buy a laptop and eventually upgrade to Ultimate. Must I have
a dedicated video card? I am looking at a system w/core2 duo 2Gz processor
and 2 GB of memory. Thanks!
 
I think you mean a video card with dedicated memory. You don't have to have
a card with dedicated 128Meg of ram. Mine has 32MB, and uses system memory
for the rest of it's needs. I can display the prettier Vista theme, but not
the aero glass. Which is a non-issue for me, since I use Classic mode.

If you want all the eye candy, then you'll want a video card with 128 MB of
ram. If eye candy means nothing to you, then any card that supports basic
DX9 will work (which should be just about anything out there with a Core 2
Duo.
 
I have a laptop with ATI X1100 video with shared RAM and 2 GB of system RAM.
I won't be playing too many games on it but Aero works fine and I can watch
DVDs. They key is you need at least 1 GB of main memory if the video chipset
uses shared memory.
 
Cea_Cee said:
I am looking to buy a laptop and eventually upgrade to Ultimate. Must I have
a dedicated video card? I am looking at a system w/core2 duo 2Gz processor
and 2 GB of memory. Thanks!
Click to expand...

Yes, if budget allows. Get a laptop with 265 megs of dedicated video ram
as Vista uses video ram differently than any of their prior OS's does.
Simply put, Vista actually uses video ram or the GPU to run videos.
Whereas xp and all before mainly use the CPU.
Big difference. If you want a high performance Laptop, get the most
dedicated video ram you can.
Frank
 
Uh, not true? I'm running Aero on a PC with 0MB dedicated video RAM, 32MB
System Video RAM and 192MB Shared System RAM.

Lang
 
No Fair ! I can't run Aero and I have 32 dedicated and 239 something system
ram reported as available. I wonder if I done mucked something up again.
Maybe I should have said, "if you want all the eye candy and high
performance" As I would imagine a video card with no dedicated ram, gets a
pretty low Performance Index. Not that it may really matter, unless you have
menu fading turned off, but it moves like it's still turned on.

Great, Now I have to spend the next 5 months figuring out why I don't get
the option for aero on the laptop
 
No dedicated is not required
BUT CHECK THE CHIPSET AND DONT DO WHAT I DID.
Intel 915 Chipsets DO NOT SUPPORT AERO.
and this piece of info intel dont actually share. so be warned

i use the 915GLE with 900series GPU. it is powerfull enough, but intel
refuse to realese the nessasry drivers

Mark
 
Ok, it didn't take me 5 weeks. Turns out my playing around with tweak VI
disabled the aero interface. Not sure what I un-checked to get it back, as
their isn't a button called disable Aero.

Now I don't feel as crazy, as I would have swore I saw aero as on option on
it before.
 
Ah... not having Tweak VI, I can't offer any insight into what might have
caused Aero to get disabled on your system.

Lang
 
I'm sure it's a setting or combination of settings under the Visual Tweaks
section. I also turned off the ability to do the Performance Index update.

The laptop is mostly for playing around with things like VI and such, so at
a certain point, I'll just format re-install, when I'm ready to actually to
use it in a more production way
 
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