I'm planning to buy a laptop but I have a doubt and confused of what am I going to buy, a dedicated video or shared video memory laptop.
I want to buy an ACER laptop for economical reasons among others. Is 512mb shared memory laptop can smoothly run a Need for Speed Carbon or other games that require a high video capacity.
What is the disadvantages and advantages of the two considering that I dont have much money.
Thank you to all in advance.
The way shared memory works is the machine is given a certain amount of ram, then the video card in the computer shares part of the ram which therefore allows it to run cheaper, but also leaves you at a disadvantage as to how much ram you can devote to the system itself.
I'm partly condfused as to what you mean by the shared memory you say it has 512mb shared memory, does that mean the total ram in the machine is 512mb and the video card shares some of the 512mb or the video card recieves a full 512mb from the ram...I don't think the later exists yet so I have to assume you mean the former as you say you're on a budget.
Going with a seperate video card which doesn't share memory from the ram will be probably the better way to go in this case. As I assume you'll run xp on it and xp's bare minimum amount of ram needed is 128mb and then if your card shares some of the 512mb of ram too that gives you next to nothing to devote for your game. If possible I recommend you pick up a laptop with at least a gig of ram and maybe a geForce 7600 go video card as it will run need for speed carbon great.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Sorry for my confusing statements what I mean is for instance I have a total of 4Gb of RAM, then I allocate a 512MB for my video from the 4Gb RAM.:icon_lol:
Therefore:
4Gb - 512Mb = 3......Gb RAM that can be used in my system?
Do you think, a 512MB of Video that is came from 4Gb RAM can support games that requires high video for example Need for Speed Carbon?:icon_confused:
512 MB of vid. RAM should suite you nicely. And roughly 3.5 GB of system RAM isn't bad either. You'll have plenty of umph to your system for games, as long as your vid. card is decent (other than the 512 MB). Getting non-shared memory video card means that all 4 GB will be used for the system and game, and that the 512 would be used directly for the graphics (so you're sort of using 4.5 GB for the game/laptop, but only .5 GB is for graphics, and the 4 GB would be for game and laptop).
You're fine...either way you go... ;)
you you should be fine, I didn't realize you had that much ram to work with >.<
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