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BlizzardWolf

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 20, 2005
44
0
My sister in college is thinking about getting an 14" iBook with the 32mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9550 video card....

Her current Dell notebook has a 32mb XGI Volari XP5 video card.

Is the ATI mobility radeon better than the XGI volari xp5?


Right now she's experiencing lag with 1.25gb of ram on her dell. The screen lags when scrolling really fast (which is probably due to the video card)

Will the IBook have this problem?

Thanks for all help!

also, is the ibook very good at multitasking and running a lot of programs at once?
 

rccola70

macrumors regular
Oct 28, 2004
124
0
California
I don't know much about the chipset, but the amount of VRAM, 32mb..thats not enough for CoreImage...I don't think.

As far as multitasking and running a lot of programs, just get as much RAM as you possibly can.

More RAM = more programs.
 

BlizzardWolf

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 20, 2005
44
0
rccola70 said:
I don't know much about the chipset, but the amount of VRAM, 32mb..thats not enough for CoreImage...I don't think.

As far as multitasking and running a lot of programs, just get as much RAM as you possibly can.

More RAM = more programs.
So you're saying the ATI Radeon is a crappy video card since it can't even run CoreImage?
 

homerjward

macrumors 68030
May 11, 2004
2,745
0
fig tree
the 9550 IS core image capable. video memory has nothing to do with core image capability although 64mb helps (rev a 12" powerbooks with 32mb vram are core image capable) and a 9550 is heaps better than a volari xp5
 

BlizzardWolf

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 20, 2005
44
0
homerjward said:
the 9550 IS core image capable. video memory has nothing to do with core image capability although 64mb helps (rev a 12" powerbooks with 32mb vram are core image capable) and a 9550 is heaps better than a volari xp5
I'm sorry but i have no idea what core image is,,, can you explain it?
 

QCassidy352

macrumors G5
Mar 20, 2003
12,066
6,107
Bay Area
the 9550 is not bad, but it's not amazing. It's a lot better than what's in your sister's dell, the 9200 that used to be in the ibook, and the 5200go in the 12" powerbook. 32 MB is not that much, but unless she plays a lot of games or renders video, it shouldn't matter - it will be more than capable for everyday use.
 
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