Graphic card and Ram

Hi all,
I have a question about graphic cards and image editing.

I would like to make image editing - image acquiring via scanner, then work with photoshop. The images size will be about 10-20 megabytes.

Now come the question: what would make image editing faster, a graphic card with lots of ram, or a pc with 1 or better 2 gigabytes or ram ?

I mean, if I have to decide between a graphic card with 512 Mb ram instead of one with 128 Mb, which one would speed up the image editing ?

Could a graphic card with 128 Mb of ram mounted in a pc with 2 GB of ram be fast enough for image editing ?

Thanks for attention,
Sergio.

You need CPU power and RAM and a good fast hard disk. The image is not editied in VRAM, only displayed by the video card.

It depends on the software you use, some graphics software does not make use of the GPU at all other than if the o/s uses it, since they use the os for their graphics handling. You probably wouldn't need 512mb if you want to edit a 20mb image. 128 is probably fine. After all, these apps usually store the image in main memory where they operate on it with the CPU.

Yes, 2GB is plenty. Like other's have said, the memory on the video card isn't that important.

2GB RAM should be enough. My Vista PC runs smoothly with 2GB =)

2GB is more than enough to edit a 20MB image. 1GB would be comfortable as well, though the low price point of a pair of 1G memory modules is quite attractive at the moment.

Thank you all for the wise suggestions. I'll take the pc Ram route then, instead of the expensive gfx card one.

Best regards,
Sergio.

One thing to consider as well is the app you use:
depending on the application it might be a wise decision to pay a little more for a 4MB cash chip (currently: get a Core 2 Duo 6320 to get the best for buck :) ).
Because with more cache the CPU can prevent itself longer from using the RAM. No mather how fast RAM is, first and second level cache are seriously faster than RAM ever will be as they are on die. (AMD believed in the myth that an on die memory controller can bypass that and make the RAM a cheap third level like cache ... at least until they were stomped and burnt by core technology)