The dirty stinkin' truth about "Shared Video Memory"
by David Norton

Have you ever seen a computer advertised that it has XX amount of shared video memory? Probably not. But I just recently noticed, in a Radio Shack ad, a computer with 64MB of RAM, and 8MB of shared video memory. The shared video memory had a little superscripted number above it, like this:

64MB RAM
8MB Shared video memory⁵

And in the small print it said something along these lines (I lost the ad, so this isn't exact):

⁵Shared video memory works by stealing regular RAM and using that instead of actual video memory.

OK, so that isn't exactly what it said, but isn't that crazy?!?! There are two major things wrong with doing this:

1) RAM is horribly slow compared to video memory, and
2) It steals from the actual memory, so when you are trying to use memory intensive graphics programs or games, it makes it so the program has less RAM to use!

I am happy to report that the iMacs have real video memory, in addition to their standard RAM.

This just goes to show that PC manufacturers continue to cut down their costs by cheating the consumer.

If you think this is an unimportant piece of info, you might be right. But probably not. This is another piece of ammo to use against the enemy!

-David Norton,
david@macmilitia.com.

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