Anyone using a 128Mb GFX RAM MBP with a BIG display? (24+)

[theaccidental]

Right, i plan to get a new MBP soon, but can't decide between the slower and faster 15".

The CPU I'm not so bothered about, but I worry a bit about the lesser GFX ram in the slower one, as I'm driving an external 2560x1024 display in addition to the internal one.

So, if can shed any light on this matter, having actual experience of MBPs and big displays lemme know.

I typically have several many tabbed web browser windows open, several editors, maybe some video content playing, some PDFs in adobe, some text editors, mail, messenger etc. Lots of windows. (i tend to use virtue desktops also).

If there wasn't much price difference, I'd get the fast one. But it's £200, and that would get me a lot of other kit...but then I don't want it to be running slow for everyday stuff.

EDIT: Oh, and i'd have 2 gig RAM whatever, so RAM isnt' the issue running all the apps.

 

[diadem]

The 128Mb model will be fine for this as long as you are not playing games at this rez I run 2x21" monitors on one of my Editing workstations and its got a ATI 9800 pro 128Mb so the MBP should do this fine.

from the apple site

Dual display and video mirroring: Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display and up to 2560 by 1600 pixels on an external display, both at millions of colors

 

[theaccidental]

Is the machine with twin 21s running OSX? It matters, cos AFAIK OSX buffers windows onscreen in GFX RAM.

I know it will *work* but there's a difference between it working, and working flawlessly. I currently drive the big display in question (actually a pair of 19s through a matrox dh2go) off a iBook, with 32Mb VRAM.

There's also the difference between lots of windows, and a few big ones - open up system monitor, and watch the memory usage for the window server as you open new windows. About a 2meg (main ram) overhead for each window.

There's an app to show how much GFX mem is in use, but I can't remember where I found it... (and i haven't got a MBP to test it on)