What does AGP Aperture Size mean?

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Gorebag

Weaksauce
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Mar 11, 2003
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I just upgraded from a radeon 9800 pro to a pny 6800gt.
I went in the bios and increased the agp aperture size from 128M to 256M.
Will this give me a performance boost?
 
not really....but it 'should' be set to the size of your video card
 
AGP Aperture size is the amount of your system memory that your video card has access to. I've never really thought it made that much of a difference, what with on board video memory being tons faster than the AGP interface. Yeah, anyway, just do what Dillusion said and match it to your video memory size.
 
I dont understand the logic of setting it to what your onboard memory has, the only game ive *ever* heard of that takes up more than what is onboard is doom3. Setting a 256mb aperture on a system with 512mb ram will waste quite a bit of memory.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
I dont understand the logic of setting it to what your onboard memory has, the only game ive *ever* heard of that takes up more than what is onboard is doom3. Setting a 256mb aperture on a system with 512mb ram will waste quite a bit of memory.
Click to expand...


depends how much ram you have in the first place, we'll use my system as an example...

2x512 of ram... 128MB on my 6800NU , AGP aperture set to 128... so 1024-128 = 896 left....i set doom 3 to allocate 512MB of system ram also, so take 512 more away = 384MB of ram left for my system to use for background apps and such ... if he has only 512MB, then he has to play around with his system to get best performance
 
Sounds like everyone is just kind of guessing :eek:

Sounds like a good thing to write an article about.
 
Nah, Im just trying to be nice about the whole set it to your vram myth. If you dont believe me, compare the fps difference between 4mb and 256mb arp with idle ram usage.
 
I don't know if there really is a set way for it to be. Every article I read says something different, and their benchmarks are always inconclusive. Some agree with Dillusion, some agree with Lord of Shadows. And then you get what the card manufacturers say. My friend's BFG 6800GT manual said to set the AGP Aperture to the same amount of memory that your card has. I'm just going with what they say and setting mine to match my 9800 pro's 128 MB. I don't have any problems. I think you'll just have to experiment with it if it bothers you that much.
 
evga 6800nu 128mb

128 is choppy running nalu. 256 is smooth.

p4c800e, 2.8C 2 x 512mb


dillusion, where do you set 512mb for doom?
 
I'll just tell ya, I was having trouble with Far Cry only running at like 25 FPS but I changed my AGP aperture size to 256mb and now it runs at like 45 FPS. I havent seen any negatives to having it like this so I'm just gonna leave it.
 
Lord of Shadows said:
It's the amount of system memory to let the graphics card use in addition to its own memory. The more you give it the less your system has, so I always leave it on as low as it will go. If you have a 256mb card you shouldnt really need to give it anything.

http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/aperture-size/
Click to expand...

It doesn't take the memory from you system until you use it. Think of the setting like the maximum memory that the video card can use if it needs it.
 
Dillusion said:
depends how much ram you have in the first place, we'll use my system as an example...

2x512 of ram... 128MB on my 6800NU , AGP aperture set to 128... so 1024-128 = 896 left....i set doom 3 to allocate 512MB of system ram also, so take 512 more away = 384MB of ram left for my system to use for background apps and such ... if he has only 512MB, then he has to play around with his system to get best performance
Click to expand...

how did u make doom 3 allocate 512 mb?
 
theres a thread here ... its a .cfg file in your doom directory, by default its set to 32MB :eek: and you can change it to whatever you want
 
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