Video RAM

Two related questions.

Is the video memory only used during gaming or watching vids or it the same
utilised for general GUI display, such as desktop, word docs power point
presentations etc...

Is it better (faster) to have video memory separately installed through a
graphic card or it makes no different is if it is shared with the RAM -- as
long as their is adequate RAM installed. ie: 2GBs of RAM sharing 1GB as
video memory the same as having 1GB of RAM and 1GB of video memory by virtue
of using a graphic card/pci etc...

Thanks.

Newsgroup wrote:

> Two related questions.
>
> Is the video memory only used during gaming or watching vids or it
> the same utilised for general GUI display, such as desktop, word docs
> power point presentations etc...


The latter. It is used for all display functions--for everything you see on
your screen.


> Is it better (faster) to have video memory separately installed
> through a graphic card or it makes no different is if it is shared
> with the RAM -- as long as their is adequate RAM installed. ie: 2GBs
> of RAM sharing 1GB as video memory the same as having 1GB of RAM and
> 1GB of video memory by virtue of using a graphic card/pci etc...


Assuming that the speed of the RAM is the same, it doesn't matter. But many
higher-end video cards use special fast RAM for their cards, so in practice
having the RAM on the video card may be faster than sharing motherboard RAM.

--
Ken Blake - Microsoft MVP Windows: Shell/User
Please reply to the newsgroup

> Thanks.