AGP aperture size ?

scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
edited December 2004 in Hardware
Is there a general rule of thumb to use for setting aperture size ? I have heard the following.

same as ram size on video card ( this is the one I have always used )

twice the rame size on video card

Half of your total system ram

I am looking for better gaming performance. The system in question has a 9800 pro 128 card and 2 gigs of system ram


Let me know what you think



Scott

Comments

  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    is that the 128 bit or 256 bit version?
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    Hey Csimon


    I am not sure which. It is a Built by ATI AIW

    How can I find out ?

    Scott
  • csimoncsimon Acadiana Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    hmm good question ...maybe try and find it on the ati site at www.ati.com
    if it's 256 bit you have a great card ...I'd say that 128 aperture size should be your best bet.
  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    Well I guess it is 256 bit

    Scott
  • BlackHawkBlackHawk Bible music connoisseur There's no place like 127.0.0.1 Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    I've tried alot of settings and I've noticed jack in performance difference. If there was, it was probably 10 or 15 points in 3DMark. I currently have mine at 32mb and I haven't had a problem yet. Infact, it has helped me in resource hogging games like BF1942 cause somehow that aperture value thingy was being reserved and made my game run with less ram. I lowered it to 32mb and the problems went away.
  • GobblesGobbles Ventura California
    edited December 2004
    most say set it to half your video memory. Most run it at 64 which is kinda of the defacto standard. Some with older cards have to run it at 32. You never really want to take it below 32. Some run it at 128. Play around with it and find out at which one it benches the best.

    BTW its not based on what bit your graphics card is but what the card memory amount is.
  • MissilemanMissileman Orlando, Florida Icrontian
    edited December 2004
    Just so you'll know. ATI had problems with their drivers for a while. Setting anything above 128 would cause issues. I have an X800Pro now setting at 256 without issue.

    It really is a dynamic assignment set for use if the texture memory runs low it will swap out to this space in system RAM. If you have enough RAM on your video card for the textures used in the game you are playing then it never gets used. You are only setting the max size allowed. Driver will use as little as possible up to this setting so in practice going larger is a waste of effort. It really has no effect on the system since it is really only allocated to AGP as needed.

    Hope that makes sense.

    I've read all those people claiming that bigger makes faster. It's all wishful thinking on there part. If the driver and system are working to the spec it will make no difference unless the game uses huge uncompressed textures.
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