128MB vs. 256MB Video Card for External Monitor?

I may want to run an external monitor for Final Cut Pro HD. Will getting the 2.16 Processor with its 256MB Video Card drive an external monitor any better than the 1.83 w/ 128MB Video Card? TIA
BTW, I won't be "gaming" at all. Just doing a little FCP HD...
20 G5 iMac/2 GB RAM/250 GB HD Mac OS X (10.4.2)

Randy, I believe you have great technical knowledge
(much more than me) and your math is unobjectionable.
But in my opinion 16% of the graphic card's capacity
just to light up the monitors is not a low figure.
Actually, for generic 2D stuff that doesn't involve OpenGL, Randy has it correct. You'll find that VRAM makes absolutely no difference to Photoshop, for instance. A couple of big screens will happily run on 64MB VRAM.
Once you start running pro applications on those
monitors, and expect real-time responsiveness and
lower and lower rendering times; you might come to
realize that 128MB of VRAM is enough, it's a lot...
but not excessive.
You only need the extra VRAM for apps that specifically use the graphic card, through OpenGL, Core Image, Core Video or similar. Of course, there are more and more apps which leverage the graphics card this way, so 256MB is going to be more future-proof, and is what I went for.

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I'd like to thank everyone for all the really useful information in this thread. It helped me solve a similar problem, which I'll describe here briefly in case it helps someone else.
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[email protected]
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offtheroad-
Do you have the CPU and monitor set to go to sleep at the same time?
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

RADEON 9800 XT 256MB VIDEO CARD won't sleep

RADEON 9800 XT 256MB VIDEO CARD
Posted: Dec 8, 2006 4:21 AM
Click to reply to this topic Reply email Email
I have a RADEON 9800 XT 256MB VIDEO CARD and when my cpu goes into sleep mode the card has a fan on it and it's still running. I checked if I had any app's still open but I don't except for Dashboard. So how can i get the video card to go into sleep mode?
[email protected]
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)
Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 Mac OS X (10.4.8)

offtheroad-
Do you have the CPU and monitor set to go to sleep at the same time?
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

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~R

Hi
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128MB vs. 256MB Video Card for External Monitor?

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