Video Memory for laptops shared vs. dedicated

[GreenAce92]

It seems from my searching on NewEgg that the best dedicated video memory I was able to find was 256mb. That's really sad...

So what should I infer from a computer for example that has i7, 8gb ram, l3 6gb cache, intel HD graphics 4000 shared video memory

Can that smoothly edit 720p films and playback 1080p films independently on something like vlc?

I ask because I have this build for a desktop, and I would like to match it for nearly the same price with a laptop even if it means I may have to look for a refurbished laptop still...some of the i7 laptops are just slightly over the price of the desktop build and yet... I'm unsure about the performance it seems that desktops will always be better than laptops...

 

[ch91woo]

So what should I infer from a computer for example that has i7, 8gb ram, l3 6gb cache, intel HD graphics 4000 shared video memory

I can tell you that you will be able to play 1080P videos just fine with these specs, but you will have a hard time trying to edit and create videos. The fact is, those video editing programs depend heavily on your graphics card for hardware acceleration, and a lot of those programs can't take advantage of all your cores in the i7 processor anyway, so having a good graphics card is the best thing you can do.

 

[GreenAce92]

Thank you for your response.

 

[Okedokey]

I can tell you that you will be able to play 1080P videos just fine with these specs, but you will have a hard time trying to edit and create videos. The fact is, those video editing programs depend heavily on your graphics card for hardware acceleration, and a lot of those programs can't take advantage of all your cores in the i7 processor anyway, so having a good graphics card is the best thing you can do.

This is completely incorrect. Unless you have a particular program that can use GPU based acceleration (few do), it is very much dependant on the CPU and will use every thread and core you can throw at it.

I suggest you specify the exact video editing program you intend to use and we can tell you if your intended GPU can accerlerate it.

Either way your CPU will be the workhorse for video encoding and more than likelly your graphics cards will do nothing for this.