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3 monitors on 512MB?

A

azax456

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 6, 2011
25
0
Scottsdale, AZ
Hey everyone - will be ordering a 2011 iMac SSD within the next few days but need a little help. I plan on running two additional monitors (23" each) via Thunderbolt and want to make sure I will have enough VRAM. I was planning on getting a 27" 2.7 i5 with 512MB because I don't do really intensive stuff, just lots of apps, internet, etc (no gaming). Any reason to believe I would need to upgrade to 1GB? I know some will say YES to be safe, but honestly, any reason I NEED to do it? I've been running one extra monitor on my 2007 MBP with 128MB no issues for last few years.

Thanks guys!
 
Three monitors, 512MB?

No, just no, especially with that amount of real estate.

Just get the 1GB and be happy that you have some overhead.

azax456 said:
Hey everyone - will be ordering a 2011 iMac SSD within the next few days but need a little help. I plan on running two additional monitors (23" each) via Thunderbolt and want to make sure I will have enough VRAM. I was planning on getting a 27" 2.7 i5 with 512MB because I don't do really intensive stuff, just lots of apps, internet, etc (no gaming). Any reason to believe I would need to upgrade to 1GB? I know some will say YES to be safe, but honestly, any reason I NEED to do it? I've been running one extra monitor on my 2007 MBP with 128MB no issues for last few years.

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...
 
Really, 512MB is perfectly fine to drive 3 monitors. The framebuffer of 1440p will be around 40MB at most. And for the compositing manager, you don't need all the windows to be in the video memory, the RAM will totally suffice.

People really get a bit megalomaniac nowadays with the computer requirements... I have even seen someone recently calling the i7-875 a "weak" CPU o_O
 
azax456 said:
Hey everyone - will be ordering a 2011 iMac SSD within the next few days but need a little help. I plan on running two additional monitors (23" each) via Thunderbolt and want to make sure I will have enough VRAM. I was planning on getting a 27" 2.7 i5 with 512MB because I don't do really intensive stuff, just lots of apps, internet, etc (no gaming). Any reason to believe I would need to upgrade to 1GB? I know some will say YES to be safe, but honestly, any reason I NEED to do it? I've been running one extra monitor on my 2007 MBP with 128MB no issues for last few years.

Thanks guys!
Click to expand...

I have the 512 MB 2011 i5 iMac and it runs the 27" 1440, 2 24" 1080 without a hiccup. I indeed ran 3 720p fullscreen on the three screens and hand no issues. I can't speak for games as I never game on computers
 
The only thing to keep in mind is what you may want or need a little more down the road - you can't simply plug in more VRAM into your iMac like you can RAM.

More than gaming to consider, video hardware encoding / decoding, movie editing can benefit from your GPU, and virtual machines (Parallels and the like) can play a little better if allocated a larger chunk of system resources.
 
I opted for the extra 128MB of VRAM in my 2006 iMac (for a total of 256MB of VRAM) and I was happy I did. 5 years later it still performs pretty well, but I was always happy I sprung for the extra VRAM, just in case!

So I suggest if you're going to be buying or custom ordering a new Mac you might as well get the extra VRAM. Unlike a hard drive or RAM you can't just upgrade it afterwards (easily). So until the day external Thunderbolt graphic cards become available I'd spring for the extra VRAM, it's only $100 or so, and it's a worthy investment on your new Mac. :)
 
if you use a usb to dvi thingy (they have a small GPU inside and newer ones can handle 1080p) , you can even run up to 5 monitos without problem ......no problem hooking up monitors ,only limited on the amount of the usb ports on your iMac + the dvi out , so that makes 3 usb driven monitors plus the internal plus the dvi driven monitor makes 5 monitors in total

i had on my iMac G5 with 64mb vram 1 monitor over mini vga plus a second over usb (cheap chinese copy of a usb to dvi monitor adapter) and it could even handle 720p videos ...just

so the amount of vram is really not as important as you might think , ok if you want to play crysis all settings to max on a 27" iMac and a 27" cinema display hooked up you cant have enough vram as you have to remember the amount of vram will be split between the 2 displays if you use the mini dvi port obviously

so i'd say i would get as much vram as you can as in the future even the OS needs a lot more vram to be able to drive all those gadgets and widgets in the OS
 
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