Mac Video Memory Updates

Well, the iBook is Apple's entry level laptop line and therefore has the least video memory in Apple's portable line. It should therefore be compared not to a similarly priced Windows laptop but to an entry-level Windows laptop. These machines typically have a shared memory base which practically renders them useless for any kind of graphics work.
I don't see a video RAM upgrade soon, maybe a different graphics adapter in the next revision. This will be sometime during the summer season, since the iBook just received an update.

 

Is it possible to upgrade a video card in an iBook, or, for that matter, Powerbook?

 

Nope.

Remember too that there is a lot of variation in what the "rest of the industry" is doing. Probably the majority of machines on the market (at least on a unit basis) are PC's with integrated video on the motherboard using "shared memory". This is where there is no VRAM at all, 8 to 32 Mb is "stolen" from the main RAM and is much slower than dedicated VRAM. Bad design but cheap.

That is the case for all those entry level HP and eMachines units appearing at your local bigbox, office supply and grocery store. If you're lucky on these P.O.S. machines, they have an AGP slot so you can consider a third party card. Then you find out that they have a sub-250 watt power supply and cannot power a mid- to high level video card...

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

Ati's Axiom and NVidia MXM PCI Express chipsets are both designed for notebooks and they are upgradeable. I don't think anyone has announced any products though. If Apple adopted either standard then we would be able to upgrade.