what is ment by APG apeture size

[narhic_fd]

okay , i was messing around in the bios and 1 of the selection in my bios is for something called apg aperture size. Before when i had a 128mb video card , it was automatically set to 128mb on the aperture size in my bios. NOw that i have a 256 mb card it went down to 32mb in the agp aperature size. Now under that selection i can select 32mb, 64mb, 128mb, 256mb, and 512mb. What does that do when you select diff aperature size? Is it like onboard video were the mobo memory is used as shared memory for you video card? does this allow me to select for my computer to use some of my system memory to use as video card memory. THanks guys.

 

[spud]

okay , i was messing around in the bios and 1 of the selection in my bios is for something called apg aperture size. Before when i had a 128mb video card , it was automatically set to 128mb on the aperture size in my bios. NOw that i have a 256 mb card it went down to 32mb in the agp aperature size. Now under that selection i can select 32mb, 64mb, 128mb, 256mb, and 512mb. What does that do when you select diff aperature size? Is it like onboard video were the mobo memory is used as shared memory for you video card? does this allow me to select for my computer to use some of my system memory to use as video card memory. THanks guys.

System memory set aside for pre-cacheing for the GPU, generally setting it to the ammount of video memory your card contains gives ideal performance.

 

[harmonica]

check this out if you want to know what it is, but indeed you could as well just forget about it and set it to 128,

http://www.rojakpot.com/showFreeBOG.aspx?lang=0&bogno=234

greetz

 

[mesarectifier]

Do you need it for PCI-E? Just out of curiosity.

They always said to set it "twice the memory on your graphics board" - does that mean 2gb for a pair of 512mb GF7900s in SLi??????

 

[Pain]

That 2x rule of thumb came about when cards didn't have 128-256Megs of ram. Today, it is best to set it at 64-128 and then test it to see what works best for you.

 

[mesarectifier]

Yeah I didn't think the 2x rule applied any more. Do you need apeture for PCI-E at all?

 

[Pain]

I don't have a pci-e board handy, but since it's called agp aperature, then I must assume that setting isn't even available. But, check the bios and see what settings are there and then google it and see what info you can find.

 

[mesarectifier]

I don't have any PCI-E boards, so I can't check. It was a general musing rather than a 'help I've got a problem' thing, but I guess you're right - AGP apeture (clue is in the title, I spose)

 

[liquidx]

through logical reasoning, one would be able to tell that the AGP aperture is not going to help the PCI-E situation. Now if you see a setting in your bios that says PCI-E, then one would think that "yes, it is still needed."

 

[liquidx]

Sorry had the page up for a while didnt see the 2 posts before mine. Ignore my last post.

 

[Whizzard9992]

AGP has a defined standard for System Memory sharing. It was a good idea, but you won't find many games that use it.

Basically, it lets your video card use system memory instead of on-board memory if it runs out of available on-board memory. Of course, it's much slower to use system memory than on-board memory, which is why most games don't even allow you to load more textures than your on-board memory can hold. You start digging into your framerate hardcore when you start to use system memory.

As far as I know, because of this, memory sharing is not a feature of PCI-E, but I could be wrong. Keep in mind that memory sharing in AGP is more or less graphics-specific. PCI-E is a general purpose bus.

 

[Whizzard9992]

Oops.

Keep it at 128 MB