I've only recently upgraded my graphics card for the first time in a couple of years from a Matrox G400 to a GeForce FX5200 128mb. Now in Bios should i set the aparture size for my new card as 128mb or 256mb? as i read somewhere that the aparture size should be half of the systems memory.
never heard that.... i've got mine set on how the motherboard came (I believe its 128) and ive been running 128M cards for a while (GF4 Ti4200, Radeon 9600Pro, Radeon 9600XT) and i've never thought of messing with it... i think it'd be a bit hard for it to be half my system memory (1024MB...) as thats not an option in the bios
the definitive bios guide on adrians rojak pot suggest that you keep it at 64-128MB even if your vid card has a lot of memory. i used to have a gf3ti in a kt266A board, that was severely crippled unless i set AGP aperture to 128. This was with 512MB memory. Do a couple of benchmarks to find out whats best for you.
AGP Apature Size should be set at twice you cards video RAM unless you don't that amount of main system memory. A 32 MB video card = 64 MB "AGP Apature" A 64 MB video card = 128 MB "AGP Apature" A 128 MB video card = 256 MB "AGP Apature" A 256 MB video card = 512 MB "AGP Apature"** **Execption, I have seen some of people use 256 MB boards fine with a 256 MB setting. It is adressable memory, it's dynamically assigned for each application. Only as much as required will be used. Setting it too low may lead to unsable system, Setting it high will not make you loose any RAM or system resources. All the tests for AGP Apature in the past from websites are not current anymore as they were on older hardware such as Geforce 3/Geforce 4 Ti with *only* 64 MB. Software has higher demands these days.
i don't know about your motherboard, but mine won't support a 512MB agp app... and i've never seen one that will either...
Just from my own experience with my Radeon 9500 (128MB card), I get better benchmarks in Aquamark3 and 3DMarkSE2001 if I run my aperature at 128MB. I get 1500 more points in Aquamark3 if my aperature is 128 vs 256. I'm running a Barton 2500+ and 1 gigabyte of PC3200 DDR. So I'm sticking with 128 for my aperature.
Cheers. Thats cleared some things up. Its currently set to 128mb but i'll set it to 256 later and see if it makes much difference.
don't know about your motherboard, but mine won't support a 512MB agp app... and i've never seen one that will either... my mother board supports 512 but i put mine to 128 coz its what ram i have on my gf4 ti but ill benchie it with both and see how they differ
How do you change tha apature?... i have an Radeon 9200 128mb i dont know if i should do this but some help would be appreciated.
So would I be right in saying that the answer to the original questions should be "Set it as high as your BIOS allows, but not more than the amount of system RAM."?
