VRAM doesn't matter very much. Intel onboard w/ 8mb can still cut it through the modern browsers.

What really matters are threads and physical memory since the browsers are bloated as hell these days 😁

+1 for physical memory. Even 4gb can get used up pretty quickly and lag your system if you have multiple browser tabs/windows open. A fast CPU is also a requirement. My 1.6ghz Athlon64 Neo laptop locks up a lot when there is too much going on in my browser because it just isn't fast enough to keep up sometimes. Task Manager shows it being pegged at 100% for extended periods of time during which I can't do anything but wait for it to catch up. I try to keep my web browsing restricted to sites that don't eat up a lot of resources on that machine. My 2.3ghz Turion 64 x2 Ultra laptop browses the web a lot better.

So if I plug in a Matrox G200 with 16 MB of RAM, it will perform just as good as a, say, GeForce 6200 in a Tualatin 1.4 GHz computer?

I suppose my main question is what is the cut-off for graphic card types whereby I won't see any more improvement in web browsing (i.e. with Chrome) on a Tualatin computer?

Used to be you could surf the web with a 486 dx2-66. Not so these days. Back when stuff was optimized for 28.8 I'd say you could get by with 2-4mb easy. Now, I imagine you'd need at bare minimum a P4 class machine with 256mb of vram due to all the Flash BS, and you would probably want to have 2GB of RAM too. And you'd probably still want to stear clear of Youtube.

feipoa wrote:

So if I plug in a Matrox G200 with 16 MB of RAM, it will perform just as good as a, say, GeForce 6200 in a Tualatin 1.4 GHz computer?

I suppose my main question is what is the cut-off for graphic card types whereby I won't see any more improvement in web browsing (with Chrome) on a Tualatin computer?

I hate not being able to give you a straight answer regarding this but it's not simply about having a faster video card. Faster and/or more video ram do not always necessarily mean faster Web browsing performance. I believe it depends a lot on reducing bottlenecks that can occur with using cards that don't match up well with certain motherboards. If you get a faster video card with more memory for let's say a pIII Tualatin if it is agp over pci, yes you will most likely see improvement in browsing speed, and furthermore you will see improvement in browsing speed if you upgrade your agp card to an even faster card (but not necessarily one with more vram) but again it depends on the motherboard (and software) and how well it handles some video cards.

I just recently upgraded my xp system with an sli hd6870 from a crappy GT210 card. It made a huge difference in browsing. This is an example of a big upgrade in an xp machine though...In win 95 and 98 differences are not usually as obvious, but they have been in my experience with agp over pci though.

Sorry. I know this does not answer your question but it's just my 2 cents.

Chrome is not very fun to use on a P3. Plus, Google Update will hog all of your CPU's time for a good 5 minutes on anythlng less than a very fast P4. I use Firefox (latest version) on my 1.59GHz P3--it's much faster than Chrome.

Then again, Chrome seems to suck on Windows XP, period. Scrolling is so much smoother on Win7. I'm guessing that's a Direct2D thing.
Speaking of Win7, it uses around 140MB of VRAM just to display the desktop @ 1920x1080.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics- … ths,3694-5.html

i use opera(ver 12) which i guess is better and snappier compared to firefox or chrome for my P3 850 MHz system with 768 MB PC133 SDRAM & WinXP. scrolling vogons website is smooth. i installed it in the first place because of the overall hardware acceleration it promised with my pci gpu. but i tried it and don't think it works. flash videos(even 360p) suck as expected though i'm able to play full HD videos in MPC offline.

As an example, I had a Matrox G450 32MB with a single monitor on a Tualatin computer, then upgraded that to a GeForce 6200 with 256MB and noticed that my web browsing experience became a lot faster. The web browsing experience was enhanced regardless of which browser I was using.

The question is, for today's demanding websites, what is the limit in terms of graphics card technology whereby I will not see any speed benefit with websites? Will my browsing experience be just as fast with a MX440, for example? Or will a more modern GeForce GT 430 improve things further over the GeForce 6200?

Wasn't there some 2D benchmark util which you could use to benchmark 2D performance?

There is Tom2D, but I'm not sure how these scores translate into a real web browsing experience. I'm not really geared up after my move to bench systems. I have two dual Tualatin machines setup in the office. The one that has a PCI Quadro FX600 feels a bit faster with web pages than the one with a Parhelia 128, yet they both score similar Tom2D marks.

The minimal amount of VRAM is not that important, but keep in mind that VRAM can define how big may be the framebuffer. For a 1920x1080 display with 32bpp, it means that one screen takes about 8 megs... so to be on the safe side, 32 megs could be the absolute minimum (about 4 screens).

If you're using a modern Windows (post XP) or a suitable Linux, it's more important to have some kind of media acceleration (like IDCT and those things) than VRAM. Some web browsers and plugins may benefit from offloading some work to the graphic card (hint: those porn videos), but this capability is only present in modern OSs. If you're not going to see HD videos, forget about that.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

Chrome is not very fun to use on a P3. Plus, Google Update will hog all of your CPU's time for a good 5 minutes on anythlng less […]
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Chrome is not very fun to use on a P3. Plus, Google Update will hog all of your CPU's time for a good 5 minutes on anythlng less than a very fast P4. I use Firefox (latest version) on my 1.59GHz P3--it's much faster than Chrome.

Then again, Chrome seems to suck on Windows XP, period. Scrolling is so much smoother on Win7. I'm guessing that's a Direct2D thing.
Speaking of Win7, it uses around 140MB of VRAM just to display the desktop @ 1920x1080.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics- … ths,3694-5.html

Firefox is no better than Chrome. Both of them max out my 1.6ghz athlon neo which was why I went with Opera but now that Opera has gone to Webkit,I have been getting lockups with that too. I think the days of web browsing with these laptop are drawing to a close. It's just not powerful enough.