Is 256mb vram enough to run 24" display?

old mbp 8600gt 256mb is it enough to run 24 display or do i have to go smaller to like 20 ?

 

What is the resolution of the screen and what are doing while hooked up to the screen?

 

mbp 1440 x 900
screen i want to get 23" 1920 x 1080 sorry thought it was 24"
going to use for web browsing, photoshop, itunes, light gaming

 

Sure. Size doesn't matter, only pixels. 256MB is plenty for 2D at most any resolution. You will just be limited by the type of connection to your video display device. I don't know what kind of outputs your MBP has, but pretty much any video output format can do 1920x1080 easily.

 

but is the quality of the image going to be at a decent standard?

 

Image quality is a non-issue unless you have REALLY crappy VGA cables. It doesn't even matter with DVI, since it's a digital signal - either it's there or it isn't.

 

Yes. Even Intel Integrated GMA graphics can run a 1920x1080 monitor with no problem. My Averatec, with a whopping 64MB of graphics RAM could even output 1920x1200 over VGA.

 

You'll probably have to lower the resolution when you're gaming. When I still used the C90S in my sig, the only game I ran at 1080p was CoH. Everything else was scaled down to 720p.

 

The macbook pro you have supports running the laptop display and an external display of up to 2560 by 1600 pixels (at the same time). The size of the screen doesn't matter. The quality of the screen is a property of the display itself, not the laptop or even the quality of the connection assuming you have a digital connection.

The only problem you might have is with performance of 3d applications running at high resolution, but that could be true on the laptop display just as much as the external.

 

I had a 30 inch on 128mb or so.
(when first apple 30 cinema display came out i dont think any card even had more then 128)

 

I have been running a 24" 1920 x 1200 display on a 256MB GPU everyday for about 4 years now, no problems.

You'll have to drop down the settings when gaming though.

 

a 1920x1200 32bpp framebuffer needs 1920x1200x4(bytes per pixel) bytes. that's 9216000bytes, or 8.7890625 MB.

so with 16MB vram, you would have enough to store the screen + the notebook screen on vram (assuming the notebook screen is less than 1920x1200).

 

Do some math...

1920x1200 pixels x 4 bytes per pixel is 9,216,000 bytes; roughly 9MB. Congratulations, using a 24" monitor will use something like 3.5% of the computer's video memory.

If you have Aero enabled, Windows like another hundred megs or so. OSX also uses some video memory for graphical functions - but again, you're going to be using less than half your video card's memory to operate everything.

32MB is enough to run a 30" monitor in the OS with no 3D type effects.


Didn't see the last response. Leaving this for posterity.

 

Actually on modern displays it is generally 24 or 32 bit per pixels or ~55-60MB per frame.

 

Hmm, 1920x1200x32 = 73,728,000
73,728,000 / 8 bits/byte = 9,216,000 bytes
9,216,000 / 1024 bytes/KB = 9,000 KB ~ 9MB

But isn't that just for 2D? What about 3D frame buffer for things like Aero?

 

On my laptop running Windows 7, 1920x1080x16-bit with Aero disabled reports 20MB VRAM usage. 1920x1080x32-bit desktop with Aero disabled reports 24MB VRAM usage. 1920x1080x32-bit desktop with Aero enabled is about 80MB plus about 8MB per extra window.


I have a 256MB 9600M GT and used GPU-z to check VRAM usage.

 

24bit = 3bytes, 32bit = 4bytes.

1920*1200 = 2304000 pixel
4 bytes per pixel = 9216000 bytes
1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes => /1024
9216000 bytes = 9000 kilobytes
1 megabyte = 1024 kilobyte => /1024
9000 kilobytes = 8.7890625 megabytes.

so no, you're wrong.

 

the screen is always 2d. there's no 3d needed for aero (no z-buffer or similar) so it would never need more.
what aero most likely uses is double-buffering => 2 buffers (that would be ~18MB then) for a tear-free v-synched experience. and it needs two buffers per WINDOW to let the app render to it, and then double-buffered show it as a texture on the window-rectangle. that helps to remove the half-drawn windows like they where in windows xp. only when app drawing is finished, the visible window gets updated.

so for each (fullscreen) window, it's again nearly 18mb.

that can count together quite a bit.

BUT since win7, aero can use system ram directly for windows, too, so they don't need to be on vram at all. they made some memory virtualisation that makes it absolutely unimportant where the stuff lies.

but a 1920x1200 screen needs at most (with doublebuffering) around 18mb.

in a GAME, it needs additionally at least the z-buffer, so goes up to around 27mb max. if it does deffered rendering, the screenbuffer suddenly gets much bigger.


oh, i forgot: games might need a bigger framebuffer when running antialiased screen modes. areo doesn't, as it can do the antialiasing better in an analythic way (anysotropic sampling of the window-content + drawing antialiased edge-lines) and only needs it for [win+tab], anyways.

how much extra memory a certain type of antialiasing needs i don't remember from memory, i'd have to read up. worst case, per additional sample another copy of the screenbuffer (and the z-buffer, too? oh dear, it's been a while ).