AGP speed

[GT]

Whilst looking at my memory settings, I have just noticed my AGP
information. I have forgotten everything I used to know about AGP. CPU-Z
reports:
AGP revision 2.0. Data Transfer Rate 4x. Aperture size 32MB.
SideBandAddressing enabled.

I have a soltek SL75-DRV5. A KT333 based board with an athlon XP 2400
(133MHz x15).

I though I had the fastest AGP available, but perhaps I am wrong. Isn't
there an 8x AGP? Can anyone tell me the speed differences between my setup
and 8x AGP. I have an ATI Radeon 8500 64MB. Would my graphics performance
benefit from a motherboard update? If so, what sort of speed increase are we
talking about?

Also, I know I can set the aperture size in the BIOS, but what is the best
setting for my 64MB card?

Cheers,
GT

 

[Sleepy]

Whilst looking at my memory settings, I have just noticed my AGP
information. I have forgotten everything I used to know about AGP. CPU-Z
reports:
AGP revision 2.0. Data Transfer Rate 4x. Aperture size 32MB.
SideBandAddressing enabled.

I have a soltek SL75-DRV5. A KT333 based board with an athlon XP 2400
(133MHz x15).

I though I had the fastest AGP available, but perhaps I am wrong. Isn't
there an 8x AGP? Can anyone tell me the speed differences between my setup
and 8x AGP. I have an ATI Radeon 8500 64MB. Would my graphics performance
benefit from a motherboard update? If so, what sort of speed increase are
we talking about?

Also, I know I can set the aperture size in the BIOS, but what is the best
setting for my 64MB card?

Cheers,
GT

To get 8x AGP you'd need both an 8x card and motherboard and both of yours
are 4x specification. It isnt limiting the performance of your system
anything like as much as the speed of that card so I wouldnt worry. The
aperture should default to 128mb and I would leave at that. If youre looking
to improve your system your need 1gb of RAM to go with that CPU and look for
a 2nd hand 9800Pro on Ebay.

 

[kony]

Whilst looking at my memory settings, I have just noticed my AGP
information. I have forgotten everything I used to know about AGP. CPU-Z
reports:
AGP revision 2.0. Data Transfer Rate 4x. Aperture size 32MB.
SideBandAddressing enabled.

I have a soltek SL75-DRV5. A KT333 based board with an athlon XP 2400
(133MHz x15).

I though I had the fastest AGP available, but perhaps I am wrong. Isn't
there an 8x AGP?

yes there is 8X AGP but you have a (4X max) AGP Universal
Slot. There is not a lot of difference performance-wise
between 4X and 8X AGP.

Can anyone tell me the speed differences between my setup
and 8x AGP. I have an ATI Radeon 8500 64MB. Would my graphics performance
benefit from a motherboard update? If so, what sort of speed increase are we
talking about?

No, your video card itself is by far the largest bottleneck.
A better / newer card will be the next upgrade for gaming,
3D uses. For general 2D uses, there is no performance to be
gained, Radeon 8500 was plenty fast enough for anything 2D.

You would get approximately 0% performance benefit from only
upgrading to a motherboard using 8X AGP. Your card isn't
8X, is only 4X, but "if" it were theoretically possible to
have a Radeon 8500 that used 8X AGP, you will still get
between 0 and 1% benefit from a board supporting 8X AGP
because the card itself is too slow relative to CPU, memory,
or the AGP rate.

Also, I know I can set the aperture size in the BIOS, but what is the best
setting for my 64MB card?

Doesn't necessarily matter much... assuming you're trying to
use the card to game, the only way to keep the game playable
is to set a low enough level of eyecandy that there is never
more than 64MB of memory used... or at most, only a tiny bit
additional memory used. Supposing it used 8MB more from the
aperture, you'd be covered with any aperture setting besides
"0", which is to be avoided for other reasons, because
sometimes bios were set to disable AGP features more than
just amt of memory if it were set to 0.

Generally speaking the aperture is set to 64 or 128MB, by
default, and can be left there unless there is a stability
problem that requires changing it. It is not changed from
default setting for performance reasons.