[rescue] x86 power question

[Magnus]

Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
> The *laptop* I'm working on right now has *four times* as much space in 
> its *video memory* as my first *hard drive*.
>
> That's ridiculous.

Yeah but how many frames grabbed from a modern video game could fit on 
that hard drive?

How many frames is that newfangled card rendering per second, at obscene 
resolutions (1600x1200 or higher)?

Part of the need for all of this memory is legit.  As game engines 
become more sophisticated, and the price of 19"+ LCD's comes down, games 
are going to be played at a much higher resolution than they were just 
five years ago.  Each frame is going to suck up gobs of memory as it is 
rendered and then displayed.

Do we need all that memory to surf the intarweb?  Not really.  Well, not 
until IE7 and Firefox ship with a VRML engine and those obnoxious Flash 
ads are replaced with something far more foul.