Except for gaming, what are the graphics chips used for?

[MultiBat]

The reason I ask is that so many are so dissapointed with the refreshed 13" MBP.
I understand that people who game on their MBP are dissapointed (when comparing to the 320m).
I can also understand that people are dissapointed with the refresh not being a upgrade in the graphics department.

But if we forget about gaming for a while, what are the graphics chips (or IGP) used for? Are they used for rendering images (like for a graphics designer)?
What applications are taxing on a GPU?

 

[Mal]

See the image on your screen? Graphics card. Play a video? Graphics card (unless it's using certain technologies that most require CPU decoding).

Basically, anything display on your screen has to go through the graphics card.

Also, with Snow Leopard and Grand Central, the graphics processor can be put to use for certain other tasks fairly easily, although the software has to support it. Don't know a lot of apps that take advantage of that right now, but some do.

jW

 

[WardC]

Whenever you play a YouTube video full-screen, it kicks in your dedicated graphics card. When you play one of these 1080p or 4000k videos on a 2560x1600 30" display, there is an advantage to having 512MB or 1GB of VRAM.

When you play a game at native resolution (2560x1440 or 2560x1600), there is an advantage to having 512MB or 1GB of VRAM.