Shared video memory question

[UNiCRON]

What does 'shared' mean? I plan on buying a PC that has 244MB shared video memory. I will be simply editing video and burning DVDs and surfing the web on dial-up and possibly high-speed in the future. I won't be playing the latest games on the PC. Should I add a video card? I don't want to spend money on something that isn't necessary.

# Intel Pentium D dual-core processor 820 operating at 2.8GHz
# 2 x 1MB L2 cache
# 800MHz frontside bus
# 1.0GB of PC2-3200 DDR2 SDRAM, upgradeable to 4GB
# 250GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA (SATA) hard drive
# A LightScribe™ Double Layer DVD±RW drive
# DVD-ROM drive (16x max. speed)
# Front-panel 9-in-1 memory card reader
# 10/100Base-T network interface, for connection to high-speed Internet service or an office LAN
# 56K V.92 modem
# 6 USB 2.0 ports (2 front, 4 back)
# 2 FireWire (IEEE 1394) ports (1 front, 1 back)
# Integrated Intel High Definition Audio supports up to 7.1-channel surround sound

[lumis]

basically it means that your video "card" will be using some of your regular RAM..

for example, a friend of mine has a computer that has 128mb of ram, but the video "card" sucks up 32mb, so he really only has 96mb of memory for regular uses.

[waheed]

Shared memory is using your installed memory as stated by lumis. All onboard video cards use shared memory. 64MB is very common for shared.

Video editing and DVD burning do not utilise your video card. The main purpose of a decent video card is gaming.

If gaming is not your thing, then theres no need to upgrade your video card. I see that you have 1GB of RAM installed, that is plenty for what you need.

[UNiCRON]

Thanks for the info lumis & waheed.

Since I won't be doing any gaming, I can use the money towards something else.

[mrtristan]

It might be nice to add a second hard drive, so you can read and write to different drives, when encoding. This can speed it up a little, and be less intensive on doing everything with a single drive. I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary, but it would be nice.

[VenGeanCe]

guys is there neway 2 define the amount of VRAM used by the video card can we do it thru BIOS or sumthin?