Ableton Forum

I've been reading a lot of specs on various laptops, but I've never seen anything that clearly indicates that the ram is shared with the video memory. How does one tell if the memory is shared?

thanks
s

sluggo wrote:I've been reading a lot of specs on various laptops, but I've never seen anything that clearly indicates that the ram is shared with the video memory. How does one tell if the memory is shared?

thanks
s

The spec sheet is generally where you look under "Graphics".
Which in general terms will list A/B/C etc Graphics card with Y meg of "dedicated" ram.
Not vRam which = virtualram or things like the intel extreme integrated chipset or anything stating integrateed built in graphics processing.
Also note that most music apps are 2D rendered so any decent graphics card from 16meg and up will generally suffice but one in the 64 too 128 meg range IMHO would be more desireable.

how important do you think shared ram would be? I can't find a ultra-portable laptop that doesn't share the video ram?

thanks

Usually any graphics by Intel is a giveaway to shared. If it lists nvidia or ati then that's likely to be a separate card (look at the model number and google it).

Shared graphics isn't a big deal in the sense that Live's GUI is not very demanding - but even a slight reallocation of memory from holding samples in RAM is a total waste in my opinion.

Even a crapola video card with dedicated memory is totally worth it.

HOWEVER;

I read somewhere in this forum about 6 months ago that there was a plan to develop something to slough off audio plug in processing to your graphics card. Berry Kewl.