Aperture Size??

[speedracer]

Help me out here, I keep hearing about the size of the Aperture. Could someone explain what this does and suggest what the optimal size would be for my system? (and how to change it Its at 128MB now...

System specs

*MSI K7T-TURBO-R
*AMD Athlon 1200Mhz CPU 256K A-Cache 266FSB
*2X 256MB SDRAM DIMM 32x64 PC-133 (Total 512)
*ATI Radeon DDR 64MB

TIA
Speedracer


<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by speedracer on 04/25/01 05:24 AM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[FiberTech]

The aperture size deals with how much system memory the AGP slot can use. From what I have read about it, a good bet is to set it up for no more than half your total memory. You can max it out, but it may cause your system to get unstable. You can change it by going into your bios setup screens during bootup.

 

[TheAntipop]

ive talked to driver writers for ati over on the rage3d.com forums and they suggest no more than 128 so you are good where youre at.

Even a broken watch is right twice a day...

 

[camieabz]

I think the aperture size is the amount of main memory the graphics card can call on for graphics texturing. This allows the graphics card to handle the graphics rendering.

If you are using Win98se the setting of the aperture at 128Mb can occasionally cause an "out of memory" fault due to the increased use of free memory addresses. As I was told recently though, if you do a restart every now and then, this problem rarely occurs.

With your card being 64Mb in size, I reckon setting he aperture at 64MB would be fine.

Try it and see.

PS... How is the Radeon 64. I'm thinking of getting one.

<b>
Heatsinks, fans & whisky...Everythings Cool!
</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by camieabz on 04/25/01 06:29 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[chrisojeda]

Set it to half of your system memory! That's all you need to know...

It worked yesterday! :lol:

 

[Guest]

The best size is half your system RAM, although some people get better peformance by setting it to maximum (even if they don't have this much RAM!). Try it for yourself.

~ The First Formally Rehabilitated AMD Lemming ~

 

[TheAntipop]

dont go above 128 mb, even if you have a gig of ram. you will get no more performance gain than having 256

Even a broken watch is right twice a day...

 

[xenite]

I can't figure out how to change the aperture size on the BIOS for my A7V133. Am I just missing it?


Beware the Sword of the Righteous, for it's hard to tell where the handle ends and the blade begins.

 

[xenite]

Ah hah! I was missing something. That config page has a scroll bar! A world of configs I never knew was available. Bwa ha ha ha!

Beware the Sword of the Righteous, for it's hard to tell where the handle ends and the blade begins.

 

[lagger]

if you receive out of memory messages in win 98se try this.. determine the irq of your video card, edit 386enh section of system.ini to include a line like int 11 = 8096 this eg.allocates 8 mb of ram to that interupt
Lagger

<b><font color=blue>Never try to idiot proof anything..God will always make a better Idiot </b> </font color=blue>

 

[Mordy]

Advice from "official" guy for appeture size is half of your RAM , or if it is not work that way do it 256 MB . The "unofficial" advices usualy found on net is 64MB. I tryed to test it myself on system with 128 MB ram, (I run quake2 timedemo) i found that there is no difference (actually there was erratic difference of 1%) until you make it too low .

Beer! Good!
-James Hatefild<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by mordy on 05/01/01 03:17 PM.</EM></FONT></P>

 

[noko]

I have 512mb of ram and a Radeon 64 VIVO Retail. When I set my Aperture size to 256mb (1/2 of my ram) my machine will radomly lock up. At 128meg or 64meg no problems. Since I have 64megs of on board memory really having a big aperture size is worthless. My two cents. Presently I have it set at 64mb.

 

[speedracer]

noko-

That's exactly what I have, 512mb of PC-133 ram and a Radeon 64 VIVO. My system came with the Aperture size set to 128mb, and I have no problems so I won't screw with it. I haven't seen one person claim any significant performance increase by adjusting it, so why bother....

Thanks everyone for the explanation,
Speedracer