Registered: Jan 2000
Location:
Posts: 7

G4 Powerbook graphics memory question

I am thinking about purchasing the Apple Powerbook G4, but 8M of memory on the graphics card seems low for a computer that is supposed to be so graphics capable. Is there something about the G4 architecture that makes 8M enough? Thanks for any help.....

Registered: Oct 2000
Location: Aberdeen, SD
Posts: 2531

I'm bumping this. This is a question I have as well. How is a mac considered a "graphics" machine when I can throw a 32MB chip in my Leading Edge POS? That it is, I have no doubt, but how?

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-Joshua
Abortion: Darwinism at its finest.

Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

I can't answer your question, but I will say that I haven't had any graphics issues with my PowerBook G4.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Mar 2001
Location: Out of my skull, back in five minutes
Posts: 1435

I'm a relative newbie to laptops; when I last was required to use one, the thing failed to do what was required of it, and I've seen molassas run uphill faster than that thing worked. but, that was in '95, and I learned a lot about their general architechture in the past year. Deciding that I wanted the answer to this question too, I wandered the web and did some research.

Based on checking the specs for several different Laptop models selected at random, it would appear that 8 MB is a typical amount of VDRAM on a modern laptop's graphics card.

Apparently, laptop computers require less Video memory to gain the same resolution as an analog monitor because they don't need to convert the signal from digital to analog. I'm not clear on that, so if anyone can confirm or deny, TIA.

The graphics memory only deals with the display. It has nothing to do with the graphics computing power of the computer; that's generally handled by the main processor or the graphics co-processor in conjunction with RAM. Since you're getting 128 or 256 MB RAM with the PBg4, I wouldn't worry about that too much, especially since you're supposed to be able to run iMovie on it.

But, don't rely on my ravings. Hopefully you'll either get corroboration here or can find it for yourself.

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Registered: Sep 1999
Location: Texan in Calgary for a while
Posts: 1361

I've also played that Star Wars Duality short movie full screen in OS X with Quicktime and it played beautifully.

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James Hromadka
Old Friend

Registered: Mar 2000
Location: NJ
Posts: 517

Other than 3-D fps games I doubt you would notice any difference between 8 megs and 32. Laptops have never handled 3-D games very well compared to desktops so I doubt this would concern too many people.

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