Sylwester Pietrzyk wrote:
Well, such a large amount of video memory is needed mainly by 3D graphics. To work at 1600x1200/32 bit in plain 2D only 8MB should be enough, 16 MB with no problems. Yes, I know that Quartz uses 3D GPU to build some 3D screen elements, but even then 32 MB should be enough ;-) Either way strange, because they should rather mention in hardware requirements appropriate graphics card.
Quartz 3D in Tiger uses the GPU for almost all graphics (For example, Quicktime 7 plays back on an OpenGL surface), and Aperture actually uses the GPU for a lot of the basic image editing calculations, so it requires a hefty GPU with lots of VRAM. Apple has tried to offload as much as possible onto the GPU, which means that performance on machines with only 32MB of VRAM is adequate at best. Aperture actually mentions GPU requirements in the minimum system requirements (IIRC it's a Radeon 9600)
-Adam
