How important is video memory and can you upgrade it?

Question

I am going to buy this Gateway Desktop tonight http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=pcmprd81600050012&skuId=999981700050012&type=product&count=0
and it says
Video Memory: 256MB (dedicated)
My first question is how important is video memory and will it even be a problem if I'm playing games such as WoW, Call of Duty 4, etc?
And what does dedicated actually mean, does it mean i cannot remove it at all or upgrade it or what?

and is this computer better than the gateway? http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&oc=DXCWQJ3&s=dhs

Answer 1

YOU SOUND LIKE YOUR A GAMER.

So I don't agree with the others. You can get a lot more computer for that kind of money and I mean a lot better also. The processor is good the video card will not run the games the way you would want to run them.

The 8500GT can't be upgraded, you could overclock it a little bit but it won't help much.

The 8600GTS is the best mid range card for those games. ~140.00$US

If you have any sort of mechanical/electrical aptitude you could buy the parts you want and put the system together yourself and have a kick a** system for 1400.00 plus tax.

If you built your own then you could have upgrade capabilities like SLI down the road as more games come out......And they are coming and you will be sorry you are stuck with a 1400.00 boat anchor.

I just built a rig= AMD 64X2 6400 black box ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe AM2 mobo 2X2 DDR2 800 2 8600GTS's 2 wd raptor 160GB OCZ 700 W game stream. 2 Samsung DVD Sata lightscribe. XP Pro.
22' Acer 5ms wide screen

And a nice NXT case for less than $1000.00

I had XP Pro already

Go to newegg.com and price your dream machine out.

Answer 2

If I am reading the specs right, the PC has a separate video card in it. The video is NOT part of the system board. So you can remove that card and replace it with a part one if you want later.

A video card has to have video memory to function, It has to have somewhere to store the picture that goes on to the screen. There are two different ways to give a video card memory. Some will take part of your computers regular RAM memory and set it aside for the video card to use. This reduces the memory you have for everything.

This PC, however, has "dedicated memory". That means it has an additional memory chip right on the memory card. So it does not have to "steal" any of your regular memory.

It is right on the card, so you can not remove or upgrade it except by replacing the card. But, if it was a card that used your regular memory, it would still be limited to only using a certain amount of memory. If you wanted to use more, you would have to replace the video card with one that uses more. So it makes no difference.

Answer 3

Dedicated memory is on the video card itself. Some cards use part of the system memory. Dedicated is better and you usually cannot upgrade just the memory. To upgrade you would have to replace the card. The more memory a card has means it can display more data at a higher resolution. 256 should be enough for a 22" widescreen monitor, any bigger and you need more memory. As for games, you need to look at what Graphics Processing Unit it is too. It's not just the memory that's important in games.

Answer 4

The computer per the link has a nice video card. Usually when you see dedicated memory it means that the hardware takes a chunk of the actual memory and devotes it to video processing. In this case, you've got a nice video card and a decent gaming machine. Go ahead, make your day! buy the computer!

Answer 5

it is very importand , the memory hods the texture data so that the pc doesnt have to keep reloading it when needed.....

also dedicated means that the memory for the video card is seperate from system memory.....

as far as upgrading , it depends on the card, when they fiorst started cards had slots where you could install or upgrade the memory, but i dont think thats the case anymore you may need to upgrade the video card for more memory, which I recommend if you gonna be WoWin....

Answer 6

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