Will more RAM help me screen span?

Hey

I've just ordered a 19" Widescreen LCD to use with my iBook and have been reading how the VRAM gets split between the two monitors.

Firstly is 16MB VRAM enough to drive a 19" LCD well (1440x900),

and Secondly will upping my RAM help this out. I have 768 now but would like to go to 1.25GB if it would help me run two displays.

Thanks
M

No: VRAM is separate from regular RAM - it's RAM dedicated to your video card (hence the 'V').

You should be alright with that setup though.

I dunno, it still is kind of laggy when I hook my 17" LCD up to my 14" iBook with 32MB of RAM, but only when I bring up the dashboard and do an expose or any sort of effect

DigitalN. said:

I dunno, it still is kind of laggy when I hook my 17" LCD up to my 14" iBook with 32MB of RAM, but only when I bring up the dashboard and do an expose or any sort of effect

Click to expand...

That is because when you span screens, the VRAM is split in half. Thereby leaving only 16MB of VRAM to drive each display.

it would be nice to have that not happen.

You can: it's called mirrored monitor mode

Think about it: Twice the amount of pixels, twice the amount of effects, windows, text etc. It just HAS to have a 50% performance hit.