Will the graphics card impact the speed of LR, Ap or OSX in general?

[WTWT]

I am looking at getting a new or refurb iMac (or maybe a MBP, but I think an iMac).

I remember reading in some places that Apple and Adobe are looking to use or perhaps have already started to use the GPUs to help with processing of things like photo and video.

I am looking at an older alum iMac w/a Radeon 2600 Pro as a possible upgrade. My current iMac has a Radeon 1600. There is also a refurb imac 24" w/ a GeForce 8800 GS and of course the MBP (up until the brand new release, which I can't afford right now) have the GeForce 8800M GT.

Besides the relative performance of each card (based on the chip set and VRAM) does anyone know if Aperture, Lightroom or OSX itself can leverage any of these cards by sending tasks to the GPU?

I am asking because if I upgrade now, I probably need to stay with this computer for a couple of years. I don't want to find out in 10 months or something that new releases of software are suddenly dogging on my computer because they are expecting to have a "helper" GPU.

I could also try and tough it out until the summer and see if the current new releases of the 15" MBP show up in refurb, but I really need something new right now. My current system has a small HDD and only a Core Duo processor, and it's starting to get to me a bit.

 

[sfwalter]

I bought the lowend 20" iMac Aluminum when they came out August 2007. I use Aperture alot and it scrolls like butter. I don't think you will have any issue with photo mgmt with the graphic processor in any of the iMacs.

SO I guess it comes down to the decision of portability or not

 

[kkat69]

I am looking at an older alum iMac w/a Radeon 2600 Pro as a possible upgrade.

(per sig) That is the iMac I have and I run Aperture and it's flawless. I just recently started using some plug in and I even have done some HDR images and that model iMac is just great. No hiccups or anything.