AGP Aperature?

[Shannon]

I was in BIOS settings the other day because I knew my mobo supported more than AGP 2x. Anyway, I found the option for AGP 4x and also found a bunch of other options. I checked in one of my computer mags that has a big list of options you can change in your BIOS to get more performance. It said to set the AGP Aperature to 128mb - but it can go to 256mb. Should I or shouldn't I?

 

[Tom M]

Set it to a maximum of Half your total Ram, and no more or you will actually hurt the performance of your PC in games.

 

[Flerbizky]

Originally posted by Tom M
Set it to a maximum of Half your total Ram, and no more or you will actually hurt the performance of your PC in games.

That actually depends on a million things (more or less) like total amount of ram. Amount of Vram on the Gfx card etc. etc. The only way to go is actually to change settings. Test. Change settings. Test. Cha...... and so forth...

 

[MistaY]

Odd, i'm pretty sure that the Bios on my Gigabyte only allows an aperature of 64mb maximum, although it's Agp 4x compatible. My old mobo used to allow up to 512 mb.

I have a Geforce 4 ti4200.

 

[Flerbizky]

I would be very surprised if it has a 64Mb limit.. What model of the Gigabytes do you have ?

 

[MistaY]

Argh!
Hold on, let me just go and check, because that computer is downstairs.

 

[MistaY]

The mobo is a GA-G0XT (-a) P3 fpga motherboard.

I just checked the aperature options and it only had 32 and 64. Even my old crappy PII comp had higher settings than that.

 

[Flerbizky]

Originally posted by MistaY
The mobo is a GA-G0XT (-a) P3 fpga motherboard.

I just checked the aperature options and it only had 32 and 64. Even my old crappy PII comp had higher settings than that.

That makes no sense at all... Have you checked www.gigabyte.com.tw for bios updates ?

 

[MistaY]

Yeah, I updated the bios about 3 months ago.
I thought it was pretty odd myself because all the computers I have built before have had higher aperature settings. It just has 2 options 64 and 32, maybe there is an auto setting option that is restricting higher aperature settings?

I dunno.

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Tom M
Set it to a maximum of Half your total Ram, and no more or you will actually hurt the performance of your PC in games.

Well, I have 512mb of ram so it should be safe to boost it up to 256mb.

 

[Flerbizky]

Originally posted by Eddy
Well, I have 512mb of ram so it should be safe to boost it up to 256mb.

Eddy.. Did you read my post. There's no final answer to this.. You have to test the settings to see if they are better / worse than the eg. 128Mb setting..

Cheers

 

[Shannon]

Originally posted by Flerbizky
Eddy.. Did you read my post. There's no final answer to this.. You have to test the settings to see if they are better / worse than the eg. 128Mb setting..

Cheers

I will - later.

 

[Tom M]

Originally posted by Eddy
Well, I have 512mb of ram so it should be safe to boost it up to 256mb.

This should be fine. Win XP runs well with around 256 megs of ram with plenty of headroom. With your 512 you can really open it up a bit. You can run 3d mark as Flerbizky but it's not really a realistic benchmark of gaming as it really tests the limits of a PC and not your average application.

 

[Shannon]

Unreal Tournament 2003 and Quake III come with a benchmarking program.