Vid card aperature size

[VHockey86]

I was going through my BIOS settings a few minutes and I noticed under the AGP port settings the default aperature size is 64MB. Im using a 128mb geforce 4 ti4200 so should this be set to 128mb?

thx, andrew

[[Neo770]]

You can I think, but for most people this make's next to 0 defference at all. I beleive some games are more stable with it set to 64 though, from what I remember.

Just because its a 128mb card does not mean it needs to be set to 128 no. This is for when low memory video cards store texturs in system RAM, which dosent really happen because its far to slow to swap textures like that.

[Telexen]

...if it's not set to 128mb then it won't use 128mb

[[Neo770]]

It wont use the full 128mb video memory? Where'd you hear that? Thats not what I though it was all about.

The real deal from a technical standpoint:

http://www.techimo.com/forum/showthr...=agp+aperature

Hope this helps,
Robert Richmond

[Telexen]

I thought it had to be taken from the card before it would be taken from system memory...

example: if you set your AAS to 128, and you have a 64mb card then your card will take 64mb from your system (when it's needed, which is probably never)

The AGP aperature defines a limit to the AGP texturing range for the motherboard memory controller.

A game sends textures to the video card. The card will utilize all its available memory to store textures. If the onboard memory is exceeded, then the AGP controller can borrow additional memory from the system's main memory.

The overflow data is sent via the AGP bus to the motherboard's main memory array. The AGP aperature defines the maximum main memory storage limit for the motherboard.

AGP texturing to main memory is painfully slow compared to onboard storage, even with AGP 8x designs. Considering most current generation games require 80-90 megs of texture storage, the most manufactured video card models feature 128mb of onboard memory, so as to never rely upon the slow AGP texturing process.

The AGP aperature is dynamic in nature. It only defines a storage limit. It does not set aside memory for AGP operations, and most important main memory operations take presidence over AGP texturing, thus the limit is of little concern. The AGP spec declares the AGP aperature should be 1/2 the system memory.

Robert Richmond