Despite the general direction this thread is taking, the OP is more or less right in what he's trying to say. The #1 reason that stronger video cards are marketed for is gaming. There's a reason almost all reviews of high-end video cards use gaming benchmarks as a large portion (if not all) of a review. In a very great majority of the time, the reason someone would want to get a high(er)-end video card would be because of gaming-related motivations.
There is this huge (but understandable) misconception amongst many people that the VIDEO card plays a large role in ANYTHING display or video-related. This is really not true. Some examples I noted when going thru this thread include the idea that your computer will somehow be slower if you use a 9400M to output to an external monitor and display at a high resolution.
Things that usually ARE dependent on the GPU:
- Video DECODING (i.e. playing DVDs, H.264 .mkvs)
- 3D rendering (e.g. Maya)
- 2D and 3D games
- Applications written specifically to take advantage of OpenGL, QuartzExtreme, DirectX,, etc
Things that are commonly misconceived to be GPU-dependent, but are generally not:
- Photo editing (e.g. Photoshop CS3 and below. CS4 begins to use some GPU acceleration, but it is still mainly CPU-driven.)
- Video editing
There are an increasing amount of exceptions, and there is definitely a shift (as evidenced by things like OpenCL) in which more apps are GPU-accelerated. The bottom line, though, is that
unless an app is specifically written to take advantage of GPUs, it will not benefit from a stronger GPU. In this sense, the OP's claim that "most people don't need the 9600M GT" is right --
if you're unsure of whether or not you need it, ask yourself: are there any apps I use that are specifically written to take advantage of GPU acceleration? If you're not sure, Google it or check the author/company's website.
Also: even for apps that DO benefit from GPU acceleration, in most cases, the amount of marginal benefit a 9600M GT brings over the 9400M is less than the marginal cost (the exceptions being, obviously, games). Things like Expose, transparency, the pretty Dock, etc are GPU-accelerated, but they require a set amount of power, and if that requirement is met, no additional amount of oomph will 'improve' performance (e.g. Youtube videos will not suddenly look better with the 9600M GT. Youtube [or rather, Flash] isn't GPU-accelerated yet anyways -- though you think it would be! It's "coming soon --
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/02/adobe-nvidia-and-broadcom-bringing-gpu-acceleration-to-flash-at/]).
Additionally, the idea of getting a 9600M GT to "future-proof" is really sort of silly. Besides the fact that future-proofing itself is somewhat futile (see
this thread for an interesting thought experiment / discussion -- it's gaming-oriented, but since we're talking video cards here anyways it's relevant enough haha),
the 9600M GT is hardly a "strong" video card. It's at best mid-range -- it's on par or less powerful than the Mobility 3650, can't hold a candle to even the Mobility 3850, is last-generation compared to both nVidia's GT xxx line and ATI's Mobility 4xxx line, and is way substandard in comparison to its own desktop counterpart (9600GT). Buying a 9600M GT to "future-proof" is like saying you should get an early 2008 Macbook Pro instead of a white Macbook in order to future-proof.
[Edit: also, sorry, but pet peeve -- it's
DISCRETE graphics, not "discreet" -- discreet means low-key / not attention-attracting
]
