vram is ram dedicated to the graphics card, its build it, thus it is called video ram. =D

Well, what sucks about that 512mb of VRAM is that the GPU will never even get close to being able to use it all - its too slow of a GPU for that much RAM. The 8600M GS is, from what I can gather, faster, albeit barely. The 8600M GT, however, will be significantly faster.

Oh, and as for the CPU, the Santa Rosa platform (in the laptop I just ordered) runs at 800mhz FSB now, among other additions . And yes, I am upgrading the RAM to 2GB (Newegg doesn't allow you to pre-configure it, so I just ordered a stick along with the laptop, and I'll add the RAM myself).

Ok, I have thought about this a lot recently and I am trying to decide whether I should order and build the computer around the end of July (maybe beginning of August), or wait and build it around Christmas time.

If I wait I can probably get either a really good deal on am2 processors, or get an am3 processor and and am3 motherboard. If I wait, Crysis and UT3 will already be out which will let me know just what I need to run them at relatively high settings.

Everything will be cheaper to (I can probably spend more money, maybe 1500 before monitor, heck, if I'm lucky I can spend 2000 with monitor and taxes).

What do you guys think? Should I wait till Christmas, or build it at the end of summer (I can see my grades going down hill already )

On a slightly different note, the nice thing about Crysis and UT3 is that since they will support dx10, the power of the videocard and not the vram will matter (with dx10, the video card can use system memory)

Again on a slightly different topic, I am considering this monitor. I have read reviews of it, and apparently there used to be problems with ghosting that have since been fixed. It also has a small problem with being slightly blue heavy in the colors, but it still sounds good. Has anyone heard of this monitor before?

Video cards already use system memory (especially in laptops), it isn't a DX10 "feature". The problem is that it is SLOOOOOWWWW. I mean, EXTREMELY slow. Think page file vs. RAM slow. Ok, so not that bad, but you get the point. So VRAM will be every bit as important then as it will now - and probably more so as textures continue to grow in size as resolution and AA levels increase.

Anyway, I would wait. The new AMD quad cores will be out by christmas so you can compare them against the Core 2 Quad, and maybe the next nVidia or ATI card will be released (I haven't heard anything about either - I'm just speculating ).

Is this because video cards use gddr memory instead of ddr? Or is it because they have to go through the motherboard extra times?




And if the next round of cards are out, the 8800's will sink a LOT in price =D
And this way I will only have to wait 4 or so more months until Spore

Well, for one, GDDR3 on video cards are clocked a lot higher than the system RAM is. Second, it has to go over the comparatively slow PCI-E bus, which will limit the amount of data that can flow through (as the PCI-E bus is already being used for other things), in addition to higher latency due to the physically longer distance and more interconnects.

Besides, it isn't like VRAM is expensive, so why would you want it to use the already cramped system RAM?