Anyone ever bench different agp apertures?

[Blakhart]

Anyone?


I have seen no diff between 128 and 64, but have had funny glitches when running at 256. Maybe 128 is the sweet spot.

[sleepypost]

Isn't aperture purely virtual? I thought if it is too low youll see a performance hit (or crash in my case) and if it is too high, no big deal.i set it at 512 mb and nothing changed, then 256 and nothing changed, then 128 and it is stable, and 64 is too little and 32 (standard in BIOS) causes a crash.

[HAL9000]

I've messed with everything from 32Mb to 256Mb and never noticed any significant difference.

[Force Flow]

Isn't the rule of thumb to set it to the amount of RAM on your video card?

[Tiretool]

I've always heard to set it to one half of your system memory (that stuff that sits on your motherboard).

[Force Flow]

If that's so, then it doesn't go high enough on some systems I've looked at.

[Alienware_Dude]

I have mine set at 256MB right now, and even when I benched it at 128MB, I saw no difference.

[Spyda]

if you have 256MB of RAM or less, its half your RAM, if you have more, its 128MB

[Blakhart]

From what I have read, the more mem on your vid card, the less the aperture needs to be. For 32meg vid cards set it to 128 or 256. For cards that have 128 on board, use 128, 64, or 32.
But just like everything else in computers, it seldom works out that way. The one sure thing I know about computers is nothing is a sure thing.

In my case it ran "funny" if set to 256, and most game sites say 128 is most stable and best performing... so........ 128 it is.

[wolfie]

played around with 128 and 256 get same scores at 3dmark.

wolfie

[sleepypost]

I CANT use 32 mb, the system totally crashes when running 3D apps. I have a Radeon 9500 Pro, does anyone have this problem??? (i set mine to 256 mb now, half my system memory, twice the card just like its supposed to be).

[Blakhart]

Have a 9500 pro and it runs with 128. I don't think messing with it any more is going to uncover any more stability or performance.

[sleepypost]

cool, i had it at 128 mb and it worked fine, but i bumped it up to 256 for good measure. I have 512 mb of RAM so i think thats ok.

[Lord Prism]

I never really got any significant improvement in messing with the aperture. I just got a new mobo so perhaps I'll give it a try again.

[sleepypost]

i dont think people see improvements. i think it is either set too low so that its not working right or it is stable. Anything above stable is irrelavant.

[FantasySoul]

Yeah,for my machine..256 for AGP aperture although I got only 256 mb RAM......
It improves............................Nothing

[sleepypost]

maybe you should set it 128 then. I think some people recommend always to have half, no more than system memory.

[Spyda]

256 is un-nessecary

[TwoRails]

Another "vote" here for no difference found. There was a thread a while back (a couple months, I think, but couldn't find it) where there was some postings from at least two different "BIOS" books. If memory serves, it's more of a legacy thing than anything else. Even my BIOS book (less than a year old) only talks about 8 & 16 MB and similar vid cards.

TwoRails

[sleepypost]

my vote remains at 128 or 256. I dont know why, but my Radeon 9500 Pro crashed at 32 mb.

[Spyda]

128, simple as that really

and as for the crashing thing, i ran my card without even an AGP aperture option in my BIOS (hadnt flashed a later BIOS with AGP aperture option yet) and it ran absolutely fine playing 30 minute decal stay UT2003 team deathmatches. now thats tough on the memory

[sleepypost]

weird. i am so stumped! my computer would NOT play or even run any form of 3D app or program. it would simple go Kaput! maybe a driver issue (ATi) but changing my AGP aperture helped or so it seems...

[Lord Prism]

I tried 128 and 256 and lost about 20 points on 3dmark2003 going on 256.

that's probably insignificant.

Athlon 1800+
A7N8X Deluxe
Gainward Ti4600
WinXP Home
768MB PC2100
80GB Maxtor 7200rpm - ATA133

[Blakhart]

No, it's not. Mine gets the exact same score every time benched unless I fooch with a setting. This is an example of going over the top with it. It then has addressing probs with the os/app mem area, is my guess. I have seen probs before when set to 256, but 128 has always run good. Tried 64 but the screen in games got all "checkerboardy", best way to describe it.

[sleepypost]

Well Blakhart, we have the same card and we both have had issues when set below 128 Bit. I guess our card demands higher virtual memory. I think it might have to do with the 8 Pipeline architecture. i dunno, a wild guess.

[Blakhart]

Them fat pipes be werkin, bro.

[sleepypost]

right on.

[TwoRails]

I don't know... here's yet another article (Computer Shopper, May, 2003, page 91) that states it's more of a lagacy setting....:

...snip... Today's graphics cards will probably never need to barrow system RAM. But older graphics cards with just a few megabytes of onboard memory might get a boost from an AGP aperture reset. Make the aperture setting twice the size of your graphics RAM, plus 12MB. If you have 16MB of graphics RAM, for example, your aperture should be 32MB plus 12MB, or 44MB. ...snip...

Then it goes on to say never go below 16, or above 256MB.

HTH

TwoRails

[sleepypost]

No, trust us, its the fat pipes.

[TwoRails]

Wasn't disagreeing!! -- I run 128 for my 32MB GF 3! I'm just amazed that everything I read on the subject refers to lagacy stuff, not the newer cards. You'd think they'd talk about current (at least 32MB and higher) cards. After all, this is 2003 and monster cards like the 9700 / 9800 Pro are kickin' butt.



TwoRails