mess with graphics aperture size?

[Kenshin-dono]

hrm whats the graphics aperture size do? i just got a 9800 XT to replace my old geforce 3 that i still had from my canibilization. Seems to be working fine, went into bios to check some settinsg and noticed this was still set to 64.. is this how much ram your card has? if so, shouldn't i set it to 256.. just wondering what it is and what it does

ran 3dmarx and got a 6156, is that about right for nothing overclocked? this is the regular free 3dmarx version

system is a p4 2.8mhz 800mhz fsb, 1024mb's of DDR400 ram, 9800xt gfx card on a p4p800 board.

i was a little concerned because durring the benchmarks the fps's were low on some of the tests. on the 2nd cpu one it got chunky

thnx

^_^x KD

[weta]

Graphics Aperture 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 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.

Adrian Wong

Kenshin-dono: Personally I would set it to 128.

[Kenshin-dono]

kewl, hey thanks tons for the info. so looks like it has nothing to do with the cards ram, but how much space is set aside on the computer. maybe i'll put it up to 128 and see if it improves anything

is that 3dmarks score decent for a non overclocked setup like that? i want to guage where im at before i mess with anything

^_^x KD

[Soulburner]

Best thing you can do is try out different settings. Try going from 64 to 128 to 256 and run 3DMark (01 and 03) on each setting and see if it makes a difference.

[Ricky1810]

[Mista K6]

ditto :drool:

seems that that xt really punches through the 3dMark. O/c and lets see some benchmarks :D . : peace2: Mista K6

[Kenshin-dono]

what the... turning it to 128 actually droped my 3dmarx score!

hrm ok thats weird, guess i'll just leave it at 64.

heh no real need to mess with overclocking right now. i messed with some games and it works like butter. Call of duty was beautiful at 1600. the sounds fantastic too, with my Klipsch turned up i felt i was actually in the war, lol

still thats weird i got a lower score with a higher aperture size

^_^x KD