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AGP apeture size?

G

Grizzle

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jan 2, 2003
Messages
231
Hope I spelled that right :)

In my bios settings, I can switch it from 64 - 128 - 256

The card I'm currently running is 128. For the longest time it was on 64. I switched it to 128 and it seems like it runs smoother (In games)

Or am I stupid, and should change it back?

TIA
 
According to OmegaDrivers.net

"AGP aperture size :128 (USE 64MB IF YOU EXPERIENCE TEXTURE CORRUPTION)"

By definition its the amount of system memory shared by the video card.
 
I've seen several people say setting it to 256MB on their 6800GT gave them smoother performance.
 
BFG says to set it to 256MB with the 6800 GT OCs, so I would assume whatever your Video card ram is set it to that. But you know what happens when you assume.
 
It a common consensus that the AGP aperture size be set to the amount of video memory your card have.
 
Isn't AGP aperture only[/i] being used when the graphics crad itself runs out of onboard memory?
And thus can "lend" system RAM, to accomdate textures ect., but only upto the size that the AGP aperture size is set to in BIOS?
And that the old "rumour" abot same/double AGP aperture size comes from the time when cards had 16-32 MB onborad RAM?
For what games use more than 128-256 MB texture memory?
And could someone find a test, to supports these claims, as I have the feeling that the AGP aperture size today has the "same"(less than) impact as the difference btween 4xAGP and 8xAGP? :)

Terra...
 
I am going to test with different settings, and report my scores in 3DMark.

Wish me luck! (I need it! or something...)
 
I'd rather see some acually gaming tests, but please, go ahead, as data speaks harder than beliefs :D

Terra...
 
Terra said:
Isn't AGP aperture only[/i] being used when the graphics crad itself runs out of onboard memory?
And thus can "lend" system RAM, to accomdate textures ect., but only upto the size that the AGP aperture size is set to in BIOS?
And that the old "rumour" abot same/double AGP aperture size comes from the time when cards had 16-32 MB onborad RAM?
For what games use more than 128-256 MB texture memory?
And could someone find a test, to supports these claims, as I have the feeling that the AGP aperture size today has the "same"(less than) impact as the difference btween 4xAGP and 8xAGP? :)

Terra...
Click to expand...


Yes, the Aperture size allocated is only being used when the video card runs out of on-board memory.

At 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 16xAF you definitely benefit from having 256MB on-board over 128MB on-board. I would also venture to say that in games like Far Cry it uses even more then 256MB. I've seen several people suggest changing their Aperture size to 256MB when they got stuttering in certain games like Far Cry that are graphics hogs.

I just ran tests in UT2004 though, and my score did not change. I'm still getting around 40 fps at 400/1100 1600x1200 w/ 4xAA + 8xAF and settings maxed. I posted my scores in the UT2004 benchmark thread i started last night.

Is there any kind of SLIGHT performance hit from using an Aperture size of 256MB instead of 128MB if you dont actually need it? If there isn't then why doesn't everyone just always set the Aperature size to the maximum value?
 
I just set mine to 512 and fragged Far Cry for about a half hour. Maybe it's the power of suggestion but it did seem smoother. Runnin 1024 x 768 everything maxed. Not much real change in Aquamark or 3Dmark. 56829/11688

When setting the Aperture size to lets say 128, doesn't the OS set aside that amount of ram?
 
i always read you set it to half the oncard memory.

256 onboard = 128 aperature. and etc.
 
The rule of thumb is no more than half your system memory. 128 is definitely the most common size, but it really depends on your hardware. If you have a lot of onboard gfx memory, you would need a smaller aperature. I.e. if you had a 6800 512mg card, you could get away with 64mg aperature. On the other hand, if you have a 64mg card, you may want to set the aperature up to half your system ram. Always bench it and see what works best... using 256 on my system actually causes problems, I dont know why, kinda the same reason that the 10 and 10.5 multipliers didn't work on the NF7-S mobos, just strange problems. Also a bigger aperature doesn't "reserve" memory... it just always gfx to use it should it be available and it needs it... nothing more.
 
Like many have said, your system will only use the aperture if it runs out of local video memory. I have mine set to 128MB just because it works for everything I've ever done so I don't feel like changing it. The only time I've seen a very significant difference between aperture size settings is in the ATi Ruby demo. After I had just flashed my BIOS it had gotten reset to 64MB and I forgot to change it to 128. When I ran the Ruby demo (using the hacked shaders so it could run on <R420 cards) it would stutter quite a bit. Raising the aperture smoothed it considerably. It probably had more to do with how ATi coded the demo than anything else, but should be a good example to see an tangible difference if you can replicate it on your system.
 
Does ANYONE, has any test showing a difference? :confused:
As I, to this date, still havn't seen a single test, showing any differnce? :confused:

Terra
 
Terra said:
Isn't AGP aperture only[/i] being used when the graphics crad itself runs out of onboard memory?
And thus can "lend" system RAM, to accomdate textures ect., but only upto the size that the AGP aperture size is set to in BIOS?
And that the old "rumour" abot same/double AGP aperture size comes from the time when cards had 16-32 MB onborad RAM?
For what games use more than 128-256 MB texture memory?
And could someone find a test, to supports these claims, as I have the feeling that the AGP aperture size today has the "same"(less than) impact as the difference btween 4xAGP and 8xAGP? :)

Terra...
Click to expand...


PCGamer's Doom3 article says there's settings in doom3 to use 500MB+ of textures (add that in with vertex data, and the actual frames themselves at High-Res with FSAA and its quite easy to use a ton more than that....)

Upping the AGP Apeture almost always gives you a slight boost in benches and games to a point. Once you hit that point (usually at 256 or 512) it can cause OC problems (my system cant get as good as FSB OCs when the Apeture is set at 256 as 128...and ive seen some friends get better OCs with 256 than 512). So basicly have it at least at 128, if not 256 unless it causes problems with an OC that you're trying to make.

It all comes down to in the end, its any easy and quick bios setting to change....so set it, do some benches with your fav games....change it....do more benches- pick the best option.
 
But since the AGP-bus is soooo slow compared to the onboard RAM-bus, couldn't this also result in lower numbers? :confused:

Terra...
 
nope, because the onboard RAM is always used up first. AGP Texturing employs a "spill over" technique.
 
I know that, but thanks :)
I was just thinking that when you started to use system-RAM via the AGP-bus, the speed could influence eg. benchmarks and in-game prerformance in a negative way?
The AGP-bus was made in a time where graphics cards had little and slow memory, compared to these days, and now the onboard grapichs RAM is waaaay faster, than the AGP-bus, and so when you start using system memory, it would slow down the FPS you where getting?
And I'd still like to see any tests that shows the +/- speed at various AGP aperture sizes? :)

Terra
 
Terra said:
I know that, but thanks :)
I was just thinking that when you started to use system-RAM via the AGP-bus, the speed could influence eg. benchmarks and in-game prerformance in a negative way?
The AGP-bus was made in a time where graphics cards had little and slow memory, compared to these days, and now the onboard grapichs RAM is waaaay faster, than the AGP-bus, and so when you start using system memory, it would slow down the FPS you where getting?
And I'd still like to see any tests that shows the +/- speed at various AGP aperture sizes? :)

Terra
Click to expand...

well you could do some testing on your own system :) and then you'd know exactly what works best for you.

As for the agp bus...things have stayed pretty close to similar...back in the voodoo2 days (Around the time AGP was released) graphics cards had about 800-900MB/sec of memory bandwidth---the AGP bus (at 1x) had 266MB/sec. So while today we definitly have a tone more bandwidth (on average about 10-25GB/sec for the majority of cards people actually have) The AGP Bus also has 2GB/sec+ of bandwidth. And I dont even know what im getting at anymore---just in short---run some tests at 64, 128, and 256 on your system in Far Cry and 3Dmark01 and 03 and see what it kicks out :p
 
It doesn't matter that it's slower than using the on-board video RAM, the only other alternative besides stuttering while the system waits for the buffer to clear, or possibly even crashing, is to go into the thousands of times slower virtual memory on your harddrive, which would also cause stuttering. So while it is definitely slower than using onboard RAM, the other options are much uglier.
 
I might do a bit of gaming test, since I don't have any synthetic benchmarks as they (in my view) today are pointless :)
Until then I still have 0MB AGP aperture :)
(GF4 Ti4600, soon to be upgraded ;))
 
I'm doing the benchmarks now. Will be done in a while.

1024x768
1280x1024
1600x1200
1600x1200 4xAA 8xAF

with

32mb
64mb
128mb
256mb
 
I have 1GB of ram and a 256mb 6800GT and an aperture size of 256mb seems to work well for me.
 
One more thing..if there indeed is a difference, shouldn't sites that benchmark state their AGP Aperture size too, to have all the nessesary data on the test setup? :)
I mean if a different AGP aperture size gives +/- 10% that would be a major factor, especillay with the close race we are seeing today? :)

Terracide...
 
There will only be a factor in performance between an aperature size of 128MB and 256MB when a game requires more than 384MB (say you have a 256MB card). I seriously doubt that you'll see any performance chance unless you have a game which is THAT hungry for memory. I've switched back and forth between 128MB and 256MB and see no performance change what-so-ever.
 
0 meg would be rather bad.. instead of using ram it'd go to HD virtual memory as that guy said up at the top.. and the HD virtual memory is... sooooo much slower than ram as you probably know.. so dont set it to 0..

~Adam
 
Terra said:
For what games use more than 128-256 MB texture memory?
Click to expand...

And that memory isn't just for texture memory. Consider a 1600x1200 w/ 4x AA requires a 30MB buffer. And you need 3 of those buffers (front, back, and z-buffer/stencil-buffer). So thats 90MB you are using there without touching textures.


CleanSlate said:
0 meg would be rather bad.. instead of using ram it'd go to HD virtual memory as that guy said up at the top.. and the HD virtual memory is... sooooo much slower than ram as you probably know.. so dont set it to 0..

~Adam
Click to expand...

No, it goes to system memory. Just requires communication with the CPU before its allowed to access the memory is the issue. AGP texturing allows the Video card to have direct access to system memory instead of talking with the CPU which is pretty busy in a video game.
 
Are you _positive_ the memory reserved for the apeture isn't used until it's needed? I thought for sure it was allocated at boot, and would be very surprised if that wasn't the case (but would love to be told otherwise).

Anyways, making your apeture too large will steal memory from the rest of your system, so games that hog non-video memory will perform worse with a large apeture if they are forced to use virtual memory. Since most 3dmark style things don't have any non-video components, you probabally won't see any degradation, but if you only have 512Meg and set your apeture to 256 games like UT2k4 and BF:V will probally load alot slower and/or stutter.

edit: ok, cool, it _is_ not used till needed. see this site:

http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/aperture-size/

So if you have a 256M card and a gig of memory it probabally doesn't matter what you set your apeture to.
 
Conclusion (yes I'm writing it first):

A) 256MB on a 6800GT is too much, or
B) 3DMark03 is not a sufficient test

1024x768.jpg


Score went down as apeture went up. CPU limited anyway.

1280x1024.jpg


1600x1200.jpg


This is the only one that showed any kind of increase. It was simply an additional 2.1 FPS in game test 4.

1600x1200aa.jpg


D3/HL2 are probably going to make the extra memory useful. I am not going to be doing any game test though.
 
Heh, well if a game needs to use AGP memory, you will have a nice dip in your framerate. Its better of course than not having AGP Texturing though (I remember people all upset about V3 not having AGP texturing when most those people failed to realize the direct result it would have on their FPS if it ended up being used).
 
AcneBrain:
thank you very much :)
This was indeed new and nice facts :)
And I guess the result will baffle some :)
Now to kick those stupid mobo manual makers ;) *L*

Terracide...
 
i just tested it on my machine with 6800 gt i had 64 MB before nwo set it to 256, and i got 400 points in 3dmark2003 and 800 points in aquamark
 
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