Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
24" iMac - Bigger Screen wants more RAM?
- Thread starter netdog
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
neonblue2 said:
That's what he asked
It is fine, but it would be nice. It also really depends on what you use the computer for i.e. games, motion.app, etc
more vram
It looks like new features of X and XP are taxing more and more on the GPU. It doesn't cost a lot to double your VRAM, so i would recommend the 256 just for future proofing purposes.
It looks like new features of X and XP are taxing more and more on the GPU. It doesn't cost a lot to double your VRAM, so i would recommend the 256 just for future proofing purposes.
With a larger screen you are likely to have more windows open, and larges sized (in terms of pixels) windows open. Each window is double buffered in main RAM and single buffered in VRAM to use the Quartz Extreme compositor. If you ever end up with so many windows that you run out of VRAM the OS will have to page windows in and out of VRAM to composite them. This is bad.
A window takes width*height*4 bytes of buffer space to store so a 100x100 window requires around 40Kb of VRAM for it's buffer in the compositor. This ignores the shadows around windows so it's probably double that with shadows.
The 24" iMac has a resolution of 1920x1200 so a single full-screen window requires 9000Kb or 8.8Mb of buffer. If we double that for shadows then we see that a single full screen sized window requires somewhere around 15Mb of VRAM. So with 128Mb of VRAM you will only get around 7 or 8 full sized windows in there (as you need to reserve a couple of full screen sized chunks for frame buffer and so on and shadows probably don't cost you as much as I'm allowing for).
If Quartz 2D Extreme ever gets turned on (where all compositing within the window and drawing of everything on screen at a low level is done on the GPU not the CPU) then even more VRAM will be required.
My recomendation: get 256Mb. It can't hurt.
A window takes width*height*4 bytes of buffer space to store so a 100x100 window requires around 40Kb of VRAM for it's buffer in the compositor. This ignores the shadows around windows so it's probably double that with shadows.
The 24" iMac has a resolution of 1920x1200 so a single full-screen window requires 9000Kb or 8.8Mb of buffer. If we double that for shadows then we see that a single full screen sized window requires somewhere around 15Mb of VRAM. So with 128Mb of VRAM you will only get around 7 or 8 full sized windows in there (as you need to reserve a couple of full screen sized chunks for frame buffer and so on and shadows probably don't cost you as much as I'm allowing for).
If Quartz 2D Extreme ever gets turned on (where all compositing within the window and drawing of everything on screen at a low level is done on the GPU not the CPU) then even more VRAM will be required.
My recomendation: get 256Mb. It can't hurt.
256MB is a small % of the TCO now, and its unlikely Apple have made it upgradable. Leopard should switch on even more graphcis - and you may want to attach a second screen which again bumps the price up.
The new iMacs are worth every penny in my opinion. I'd spend an extra 2pennies making it 256mb ram. Future proofing
I'm pushing my Dell 24" with 64 MB VRAM, so 128MB would be fine
for anything short of intensive graphics and 3D.
If you can afford the 256MB upgrade without too much trouble, go for it, but make sure you have enough left over to equip your new machine with at least 2 GB RAM.
for anything short of intensive graphics and 3D.
If you can afford the 256MB upgrade without too much trouble, go for it, but make sure you have enough left over to equip your new machine with at least 2 GB RAM.
FFTT said:
Did the same with my old 64MB 8500 on my PC.
And you can run 1920 *1200 with a 32MB card.