I had a sneaking suspicion that the salesguy didn’t know what he was talking about, but since his opinion was backed up by the technical information on the company’s web site, I decided to turn off my brain for a moment and for once in my life simply accept what someone who theoretically should know what he was talking about said.
So, I ordered a laptop with a 128-meg video card instead of the 256-meg one I was planning on buying, because I really didn’t want a 17-inch screen. After all, I was assured, there’s no way that the additional memory is needed, even if you’re running a graphics intensive application.
Of course, the guy turns out to be completely wrong. Somewhere between 87 and 99 megs of uncompressed textures, we’re falling off a performance cliff, because the 128-meg card can’t handle the amount of 24-bit textures we’re throwing at it. It’s definitely the textures, because the geometry is the same and dropping down to 16-bit restores the performance. (This reduces the memory requirement by one-third, keeping us on the safe side of the cliff.)
It seems that the company is willing to rectify the error and allow me to swap out machines, but it’s still annoying. First, because I really didn’t want to lug a 17-inch beast around Second, because sometimes I really don’t want to think, I just want someone to accurately tell me what my options are.