Best AGP aperture size?

[Bobby]

My BIOS was set to an aperture size of 4. What's meant by this? What's the
best value for this? I have a Radeon 9600 Pro. Cheers.

Bobby

 

[Stoneskin]

Bobby left a note on my windscreen which said:

My BIOS was set to an aperture size of 4. What's meant by this? What's the
best value for this? I have a Radeon 9600 Pro. Cheers.

Bobby

Aperture size means how much system RAM the video card will be able to
use if it needs more memory than the card has onboard.

If your video card has 128MB or more you probably won't notice much
difference since the vast majority of games do not use up more than
128MB of video memory so the system RAM will not be touched.

So if a game requires 128MB of memory and you have 64MB on board you can
set the aperture size to 64MB - make sense?

Bear in mond of course that if a game requires oodles of video RAM you
wouldn't want it to eat up all your system RAM so don't set the arpeture
size to high.

As a general rule of thumb I would make up about 256MB for video memory.
I have a 128MB card so my aperture size is set to 128MB. I would set it
higher if I had a 64MB card and would probably leave it as 0 if I have a
256MB card. Presuming you had at least 256MB of system memory.

BTW: 4 is a bit low for a default setting - are you sure that's not the
AGP speed you're looking at?

 

[Tod]

I've heard that you do not want the aperture any smaller then 32.
a setting of 64 to 128 should be enough for most personal computers.

 

[BoroLad]

My BIOS was set to an aperture size of 4. What's meant by this? What's the
best value for this? I have a Radeon 9600 Pro. Cheers.

Bobby

http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/aperture-size/

 

[DaveW]

Set it to 128.

 

[Frank]

My BIOS was set to an aperture size of 4. What's meant by this? What's the
best value for this? I have a Radeon 9600 Pro. Cheers.

Bobby

Recently discussed here in another post.

HTH
Frank

Below from: http://www.rojakpot.com/
Adrian's Rojak Pot-The BIOS Optimization Guide

Graphic Win Size

Common Options : 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256

Quick Review

This BIOS feature does two things. It selects the size of the AGP
aperture (hence, the name Graphic Windows Size) and it determines the
size of the GART (Graphics Address Relocation Table).

The aperture is a portion of the PCI memory address range that is
dedicated for use as AGP memory address space while the GART is a
translation table that translates AGP memory addresses into actual
memory addresses which are often fragmented. The GART allows the
graphics card to see the memory region available to it as a contiguous
piece of memory range.

Host cycles that hit the aperture range are forwarded to the AGP bus
without need for translation. The aperture size also determines the
maximum amount of system memory that can be allocated to the AGP
graphics card for texture storage.

Please note that the AGP aperture is merely address space, not actual
physical memory in use. Although it is very common to hear people
recommending that the AGP aperture size should be half the size of
system memory, that is wrong!

The requirement for AGP memory space shrinks as the graphics card's
local memory increases in size. This is because the graphics card will
have more local memory to dedicate to texture storage. So, if you
upgrade to a graphics card with more memory, you shouldn't be
"deceived" into thinking that you will need even more AGP memory! On
the contrary, a smaller AGP memory space will be required.

It is recommended that you keep the AGP aperture around 64MB to 128MB
in size, even if your graphics card has a lot of onboard memory. This
allows flexibility in the event that you actually need extra memory
for texture storage. It will also keep the GART (Graphics Address
Relocation Table) within a reasonable size.