Santa Rose Chip Set

Since I am new, any one can tell me what is Santa Rose Chip Set?

For the aluminum iMac, does its CPU run with Santa Rose chip set?
If Yes, aluminum iMac run with Santa Rose chip set already when it first introduced? or it just changed recently?
(because I knew that the MacBook changed the chip set just recently)

The reason I ask this because I am going to buy an iMac, and the store in my university has iMac for sale(the price is lower than Official Student Discount Price). However, because I am not sure aluminum iMac runs Santa Rose since it first introduced or just changed recently like Macbook, I worry the price is lower due to clearance

It's Santa Rosa - the latest chipset architecture from Intel.

The aluminium iMac has had Santa Rosa architecture since it was released on August 7th.

If your university has aluminium iMacs for sale, then buy one.

Here is a link to Santa Rosa information.

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070509-intel-launches-new-santa-rosa-mobile-platform.htm

I have one more question. For the 2.4Ghz iMac, when the ram insdie the graphic card is not enought for itself, will it share little bit with the main ram.
(I don't know whether you guys can understand or not, sorry)
I mean when the graphic card's ram is not enought, will it share some extra main ram like Macbook?

Generally the RAM is installed within the video card, and will operate from 8MB to 512MB, depending on the card itself, and not from the memory RAM modules.

If you are not happy with the performance of your iMac, you might have to consider having a higher rated card installed.

I have one more question. For the 2.4Ghz iMac, when the ram insdie the graphic card is not enought for itself, will it share little bit with the main ram.
(I don't know whether you guys can understand or not, sorry)
I mean when the graphic card's ram is not enought, will it share some extra main ram like Macbook?

Click to expand...

What exactly are your concerns in this regard? Whether it does or does not should not bother you. It works doesn't it? Anyway, just to be clear, if you are playing a high end game which needs a lot of VRAM, then it will dip into the system memory for the purpose.

harryb2448 said:

Generally the RAM is installed within the video card, and will operate from 8MB to 512MB, depending on the card itself, and not from the memory RAM modules.

If you are not happy with the performance of your iMac, you might have to consider having a higher rated card installed.

Click to expand...

First, you cannot replace the GPU in the iMac. Second, the 2.4 GHz iMac uses a 256MB GPU. The system RAM is not shared with the GPU.