VGA memory in notebook

[Khairul]

Actually pardon me if this section is not the right place; but anyway I run XP.

When reading notebook specs, I am in the dark as to the difference between 'shared memory' and 'integrated' as far as VGA memory is concerned. And why is that separate video card is always better than either. I am using GF2 64MB on my desktop AGP slot and planning to acquire a notebook.

[njovin]

I believe shared and integrated are the same thing. It essentially means that the laptops vid card is using your regular RAM as it's memory. You can usually specify how much of your computers RAM the vid card uses (16,32,etc).

It is always better to have a vid card with it's own memory, because that memory is dedicated to the vid card and you will have better performance.

On a laptop, however, I think almost all of them use the shared memory. Unless you are planning on playing graphic-intensive games on your laptop, I wouldn't worry too much about it.