[subscribed from another address due to apparent blacklisting of my ISP]
On 2010-12-19 15:28 , John Francis wrote:
Way, way more than you need. For normal (non-game) use, you basically need enough video memory to hold a full-screen image. For a 1920x1080 display, in 24-bit true colour (let's call it 32-bit pixels) that's roughly 8MB.
um, yes, Mac OS X uses 32 bits per pixel because it has an alpha channel, but ... no, this analysis is very dated -- nowadays (at least on Mac OS X) the GPU is a major part of the processing chain in some uses; it makes certain operations (mainly vector and matrix operations) much faster than when the CPU is used; on Mac OS X the OS uses is automatically and many apps take extra steps to get a boost from the GPU ... the benefit is strong enough, for example, that it helps the MacBook Air, which has an NVidia GeForce 320M GPU instead of low-performing Intel GMA GPU, perform much better than its wimpy CPU would suggest (solid state drive helps too)
and even if your supposition were correct (VRAM used only for display) you'd need enough for every window, times at least two for double- buffering; hit the Exposé button on my machine and you'll usually see 30+ windows, not counting 80+ tabs in assorted browser (tabs use VRAM just as windows do)
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