I just wrote an article on AGP Aperture Size and how it affects performance. He is a quote

 “Probably one of the most confusing things associated with 3D performance is AGP Aperture size. Some people say to make it the same size as your video memory and others say max it out. Well we are going to get to the bottom of it here and find out what works best. “

Read more here

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Where is the AGP6X? Why jump to 8X and how much different than AGP4x and AGP8x.

If both cards have same specifications, but one is AGP4x and AGP8x, is there a huge different? Can we tell by just using it?

I believe that 8X is about 40% more bandwidth but I have only had the opportunity to try it once with a Geforce 4 TI4200 8X on an asus A7V8X Mobo and the system had problems and it lost the 8X card for a 4X card.

I am hoping to do a comparison soon but I have to get my hands on an 8X mobo for my review rig.

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Hello all,

vdub, testing is always interesting but i dont think your test was done in the right way.

I dunno how you can test AGP aperture size having only 256mb of memory, Windows XP takes about from 80mb to 100mb its own, a game nowdays might even take more, i fail to see how AGP can be tested in such conditions.

Would be nice if you repeat the tests with 512mb or even 768mb, with a 32mb, a 64mb and a 128mb card from both ATi and nVidia (since they might be using AGP memory in a very different way).

:)

I plan on rerunning the test with 512Mb but hardware isn’t free so I do what I can with the resources I have. 

Also I wanted to see what would happen if I made my Aperture size the same as my memory. After the article was finished I Kicked back to play some games and left my aperture at 256Mb almost everything I played was unplayable until I rebooted and changed it to 128. This proved my whole point that aperture size doesn’t necessarily have to be maxed out. Anyway your opinion dose mean a lot to me and yes I plan to rerun the test at 512Mb

Edited by vdub on July 09 2003 at 2:22am

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I am looking for your result.

Personally I do like ATI. Well I like ATI have those Sharp and Colorfully pictures show on your desktop. Unlike GF series card, it always have some kind of fog in front of your screen.

GF definitely good for gaming, but not for video.

Do you agree?

Video yes to a point. I don’t believe ATI capture cards are very good quality and unless they changed things from last I heard unless you reincode a video done with an ATI capture card you can only play it on other systems with ATI cards. I would suggest pinical if you where looking for that. But if you’re talking about watching video then yeah just about any video card can handle that. I see where you’re coming from with picture sharpness but with the right OC on a GF and forced antialiasing settings you can get close to the same.

 

I am looking forward to the GF FX I am hoping I get one for review.

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Hi,

I just breezed by while looking for different views on AGP aperture size and after reading your article\test results I wanted to ask you about how would you set the aperture size with my setup. see my sig. and the ti4600 has 128 megs. Now I'm wondering if I should set the aperture as low as possible ?? I realize that this may vary from system to system and mine has been at 128 from the beginning. When I set it to 256 all games kind of lag. Should I set it as low as possible ?? Mainly I would like to know what you think because you ran a bunch of benchmarks. A good test you did there if you ask me, so what do you think ???

Thanks, Dak

Edited by MrDak on April 26 2003 at 3:10pm

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msiK7T
IBMDeskstar 40gb
1024mb pc-133
GFti4600
Phillips acoustic edge
Enermax 350watt
RazerBS2000
XP home

I am in the process of rewriting that article right now. I am going to be using a few different video cards and memory combinations.

 

In your case I would set you AGP Aperture to 64. In just about every test I have ran the best performance has been achieved by not matching or passing your physical memory size. So with that in mind I would take your amount of memory and set your AGP aperture one setting lower.

 

You will see more performance though upgrading to 256Mb or even 512Mb of memory.

Edited by vdub on April 26 2003 at 4:19pm

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You must have missunderstood my sig.   I allready have 1 Gigabyte of ram installed...1024 mb.....ok ?

any ideas ???

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msiK7T
IBMDeskstar 40gb
1024mb pc-133
GFti4600
Phillips acoustic edge
Enermax 350watt
RazerBS2000
XP home

I’m sorry I did read it wrong.

 

I thought you had 128Mb

 

The same rule applies though. Don’t match your memory size just use the setting right below it.

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I always set it to be hald of my system memory. That has always worked well for me.

I have heard a few people say that so far.

 

From all the test I have ran I can’t disagree with you. I think as long as you don’t match or exceed your system memory it should be fine. In my case I have 512Mb so I set it to 256Mb and it works best. I think I might get a couple sticks of 512 and run some more tests to see if I can get a clearer picture. I may also run all the tests with a few different video cards.

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That's the way to go. I think that if you have a gig of RAM then you will have more memory to spare and will be able to max it out without any problem but I have never had that much memory so I don't know for sure.

Honestly I think with newer video cards coming with 128 and 256 mb of memory AGP aperture is making less and less of an affect on performance. But then again maybe we will get some new games out soon that will push those cards to there limit.

 

I was hoping for a lot more solid results in my article though. I think the only answer I came to is synthetic benchmarks seam to be all that’s affected by agp aperture.

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Good point... twice. Games don't even come close to being able to fully use the abilities of todays video cards and that sucks because the cards are capable of so much. I say try a gig of RAM and see how much it improves your benchmarks as well as how well it effects the Aperture Size.