Is 32 Megs on the Video Card too little for Revit?

[hand471037]

In the ongoing saga of my Laptop selection, I'm down to two condenders. Both are great, have some keen features, are fast, and would have 1 gig of ram. The only big difference between the two (other than brand) is that one uses the Nvidia Go 32 meg Video card, and the other the new ATI 64 meg Video card.

I'm leaning toward the one that uses the 32 meg card, because it's a Tablet PC (which I've always wanted, for I've used Wacom tablets for years now), but I'm worried that it's not going to be enough Video card for 3D.

I know that several of you out there are using laptops with 32 meg video cards, so if you could chime in I'd be most grateful!

[PeterJ]

Jeffrey,

Would you have sufficient screen space with a tablet? I was intrigued by them when they were first released but felt that they were wrong for the kind of work we do simply becasue you get a lower screen res. Play with one if you can first.

Also as part of that playtme see how good the handwriting recognition is. As an architect I would imagine you might have neat handwriting although in this CAD era that is not a given the way it once was, but I have good handwriting and found that the Pocket PC I own (which I believe uses similar algorithms) was not that accurate - though of course it is a less powerful processor.

[dna]

revit does not utilize video card memory yet, accurender does to a limited extent, i've ran extensive rendering testing on several different video cards with little to no difference in performance between 32mb to 128mb video cards

i'd just get the tablet, they're fun

[ArchMiro]

Again, here I go being negative...

Personally, I'd stay away from the tablet PC. You would probably be better off getting a drawing pad from WACOM. That way, you get more bang for the buck and a bit more versatility for the stuff you will probably want to do with the computer.

While tablet PC's have a very high cool factor, I would only recommend one of them if you already have a true workhorse that you use more often.

Sorry to be a naysayer, I'm just giving you the voice of my personal experiences.

[hand471037]

I've gotten to play with the Wacom flatscreen tablets in the past. The 15" model is almost identical to what they put in the Tablet PC's, for Wacom screens are used by 80% of the different brands. So I've got an idea of what it will be like. I've been using non-flatscreen Wacom tablets for seven years now, and can't function with anything else.

It is a little small, and I wish it was higher res, but it works. Once you get used to working with a Wacom pen tablet it's real hard to use anything else IMHO. So if it can be built into the laptop, that would be swell! And now that Toshiba is making a Centrino Tablet, it's possible to run CAD on one efficently...

ArchMicro, on the subject of Tablet vs. Laptop & Wacom tablet; I'm willing to loose a little workability to gain the flatscreen tablet. After working on one a year ago at AU, and how fast I was able to work with it, I don't think I would care about the Tablet not being fast at rendering and such. I, too, wasn't thinking of getting a tablet until I saw that they make one with a Centrino processor, and that the Centrinos are fast enough to do real work- prior I would completely agree with you about tablets being too underpowered to do much, but now... I donno... I'm gonna find one and try it out first, of course. And when I need real horsepower for rendering, I'll probably be using Radiance anyways which I can run on our Mac at home.