AGP Aperture Size

[Reefsmoka]

What is the AGP aperture? what does it do?

I got 512 DDR, Radeon 9800pro (128mb) whats a better setting out of 128 and 256 and why?

 

[floppybootstomp]

reef, to be honest, I really don't know.

This issue has been debated a zillion times on many Forums across the world and as yet I haven't seen a conclusion that was proved positive.

I will say this though, most peeps agree it don't make any difference at all no matter what you set it to.

I was advised once, some time ago, to set it to half the video card RAM size, then again was advised to make it same size as Video RAM. Now I just set it to same size.

There are technical explanations as to what it actually does if you want to search for them, but I've found whatever you set it at, it makes no real world difference at all.

 

[ChristopherP]

i have read that for optimal performance, set it to double the amount of video memory so you want 256.

 

[floppybootstomp]

i have read that for optimal performance, set it to double the amount of video memory so you want 256.

Chris, I've read every permutation of what you can set it to, some folks absolutely insisting they're right and all suggestions from different individuals conflicting with the others.

If somebody can offer real proof with a technical explanation as to why their reccomendation works better than others, I'd be very interested to hear it.

I want proof.

Tell ya what. Do the FutureMark 2003 test on four different aperture settings. I have. Like I said, no difference at all.

 

[ChristopherP]

hmm... interesting.

There has to be SOME reason as to its existance lol

anything to do with any other options that you need to see to like fastwrites???

Ill look it up in a sec

 

[Matt Jason H]

IIRC this just specifies the amount of RAM your graphics card can have if it's memory is too little for all the textures/etc it needs to store. For most modern cards with bigger memorys it's pretty irrelevant.

 

[Reefsmoka]

Well i read in an issue of PC Format (forgot which one -_-) you should have it at a quarter or half your ram size.

Ive ran 3DMark03 with the aperture ar 128 and at 256 and the scores are virtually identical. So it doesnt improve on that side of things.

I was just intrested to know, its gotta be there for a reason!

But thanks for the feedback guys ^_^ .

 

[Quadophile]

I agree with what Flops says as I also did a lot of checking on this issue and read many articles but none convincing enough to warrant any tweaking as such.

I also came across a very useful article recently but forgot the source which did some calculation and suggested that the current breed of the cards are having too much memory and one does not need that much to run the games available today. I do remember the figure that person quoted which was 71 MB of ram required to run the top games of today. He went on to say that the 256 MB cards are underutilised due to this reason and 128 MB is more than enough for any game existing today. Until the games come up with more demand for VGA ram 128 cards are the way to go.

I tend to agree with the poster above since the hardware is always far ahead of the software, at least in case of VGA cards. The games come out much late than the cards do.

 

[muckshifter]

Your MB would have set its own default setting ... which should be 64 or 128, leave it & forget it.

There has to be SOME reason as to its existence lol

Yes, there is ... fit a 4Mb video card and you'll see why.

The aperture size has nothing to do with your video card memory.

The aperture memory will not be used until your video card's on-board memory is running low ... just like a swapfile

You can do all the "tweaking" you like, but until you physically run out of video memory your wasting your time ... however, fit a 4MB video card and have a play, you'll still find 64/128 to be the better setting.

 

[ChristopherP]

ah so a pagefile thing for video cards, gotcha.

it all makes perfect sense now

 

[Reefsmoka]

71 MB of ram required to run the top games of today. He went on to say that the 256 MB cards are underutilised due to this reason and 128 MB is more than enough for any game existing today. Until the games come up with more demand for VGA ram 128 cards are the way to go.

Who ever wrote that obviously hasnt tried to play Doom 3 or Far Cry on a video card with less than 128MB. To play with everything maxed out on Doom 3 it is recommended you have a 512MB gfx card, and there not even out yet!

So i think thats a load of tosh.

 

[Quadophile]

Reefsmoka,

I trust your judgement more than the person who said that! After all he was a total stranger to me but you are not

 

[RayJones]

so, uuhm.. hello.

setting the aperture size would be great for me since my graphics card has only 16mb of ram. but my bios does not offer an option like this (it does not offer much at all).
so my question is: is there a way to set the aperture size without the bios? using a nice nifty handy software tool maybe? has anyone any other ideas or experience with this?

oh.. i nearly forgot:
i ride a sony vaio fr series (pcg fr215e) with a nvidia geforce 420 go with 16mb vram.

..

 

[tomsega]

What is the AGP aperture? what does it do?

I got 512 DDR, Radeon 9800pro (128mb) whats a better setting out of 128 and 256 and why?

The AGP aperture, in it's most basic explanation, is the part of your system RAM you dedicate to 'pretending' it is graphics card RAM. It also acts as a sort of swap file buffer, which is why ALL graphics cards ask that at least 16-32mb AGP aperture is available.

If I were you, I would CERTAINLY GET ANOTHER STICK OF 512MB RAM AND UP THE APERTURE TO 256MB.
You might think, "hey, surely that would give me 384mb of RAM and even the best games only require 256?" - That is true, but system RAM is much slower than that of most graphics cards, and your CPU speed is bottlenecking that too. Upgrading to A gig would still leave you with a very respectable 772mb of system RAM, however I wouldn't go setting the aperture to 256mb without first upgrading, because you'll most probably recieve a larger all-round performance hit if you only have 256mb of system RAM left.

Half life 2 and Far Cry will run quite happily in HIGH texture mode with an 128mb gpu plus 128mb (agp), but some games like battlefield 2 will even stutter in medium unless they have the full 256mb of spare RAM to play with.

 

[V_R]

Sorry to say Tomsega, this is over a year old!! Check out reefs sig now..

 

[Reefsmoka]

Cheers for the reply though mate.