[audioboy]

I just picked up a new video card, the ATI X850 XT. it says it has a 256-bit memory interface. My question is, should I set the AGP aperature size in my BIOS to 256?
I am not real in the know on the BIOS settings for this type of thing...does the aperature size eat into my system RAM?
I never thought I would be one of those guys that blows large dollars on a vid card, yet here I am ...so I want to set it up right!

Any advice and answers appreciated!

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Hi,

It is pretty much recommended to set the apg aperature size to half the systems memory.

If you have any problems running at 256 bump it back to 128, this is assuming you have 512 mb of ram.

Rick

[Doby]

Hi,

It is pretty much recommended to set the apg aperature size to half the systems memory.

If you have any problems running at 256 bump it back to 128, this is assuming you have 512 mb of ram.

Rick

[Capn' Crunch]

Setting the aperature higher is only usefull for a low end card like 32mb typically onboard graphics.

This uses part of your RAM as VRAM.
In your case you shouldn't have any use for touching that at all.

[audioboy]

hmm...just to make sure, then, the last card I had set the aperature to 128. are you reccommending to leave it there, or scale it back?
I have a P4 3.2e, 1024 system RAM. this vid card has 256 onboard memory.
I doesnt sound like dumping half my system memory into the video card is a real good idea!

and thanx for the quick responses!

[Doby]

I should have said no more the half the systems memory but at 256 that would only be quarter.

At 256 I doubt you would see any significant gain but you would have to run bench marks and compare to other settings to see.

You could leave it at 128 it should be fine

Rick

[audioboy]

OK, that makes more sense. it sounds like I wont see any significant difference, but I will end up playing with the settings at some point.
Thanx again for your help, much appreciated!

[Doby]

your welcome

[audioboy]

Hey Doby, I was just looking at your system specs in your sig...I started with a visiontek 9600XT, 256 ram. At the games self-determined video settings, it started choking badly about an hour into doom3. since I had just bought all the components and built this PC, I could still return the video card for an upgrade...and now Im quickly becoming a gamer geek.
Once I looked at the ATI site, and did a product comparison, the problem was obvious for me. Since I built this machine so I could play the newer games, I am able to rationalize blowing the money on a high end card...I can rationalize anything!
Anyway, my point is, if you want to fire the new games up, you might want to upgrade some...but probably not as much as I did!
thanx again.

[Congo]

Hi,

Actually there is a GPU called either a X800XL or a X850XL (depending on the card maker I think), that is a lot cheaper than the X800XT or 850XT, and it performs very well indeed, the only thing is, they seem rare to find.

Audioboy,

The AGP aperature doesn't use any system RAM per se, it merely sets a maximum amount of AGP system memory that the AGP bus will use.

This is the way it works I think... You are heavily into an action scene in a game and the video card is running out of room to process the textures, so the AGP kicks in and starts using system ram to process the textures via the AGP bus.

I read somewhere that in game, it's mainly the textures that get processed on the AGP bus.

In the case of a very fast video card with lots of ram, you really dont want to use the system memory via AGP because it's not nearly as fast as the DDRIII video ram and will actually slow your game down. Some people tweak their settings to disable the AGP memory usage altogther, thus, reportedly increasing performance.

Some games may well use in excess of the card's memory however, so unless you really know your stuff, leave the AGP memory enabled.

I have found that a AGP aperature setting of 128mb works faster in some benchmarks on my rig than a setting of 256mb. But this hasn't been resolved, and certainly depends on your configuration.

With 1024mb of system ram total, and 256mb allowed for maximum AGP memory, the worst case is that if your video processing is so overloaded that it is actually using the maximum available AGP memory, your game only has, at the most, about 630mbs of ram to operate in, as your op sys etc is using around 120mb plus.

I wouldn't worry to much about the setting, setting it for 128mb will probably be safe to say the least, but if you do have some issues with Frame Rates, then you might try and alter it in a controlled way so you can monitor the result/effects of the change.

Remember, setting the aperature alone doesn't use any system ram, it only sets a maximum allocation for AGP memory. This is quite a different animal from the typical onboard video card RAM allocation, which actually DOES reserve the system ram for the onboard graphics chip, if any. Ram that is reserved for onboard video cannot be used by the rest of the system and is removed from the total count at the PC's boot screen.

I think I need a new prop for my hat .......

Edited by Congo, 13 April 2005 - 02:32 AM.

[audioboy]

Hi Congo-
thanx for the involved explanation. as I mentioned in the first post, once I get into advanced BIOS settings, I dont really know whats up...so I ask before changing anything. your info is most helpful!
I would have liked to go with the 800XL, but it is very hard to find right now, especially in AGP. I had bought the original card at compusa, so I was obligated to return it quickly if I was going to get my original $ spent toward the trade-in. I therefore went with what they had in stock, the 850XT- fortunately, ATI had just dropped the price on that card a few days before...
I havent had much time to really assess the performance of the new card, hopefully after I get off work tonite. What is a good program, etc. to monitor framerate? it would be interesting to see what is really happening.

[Congo]

Any 3D graphics benchmarking application will give you comparison results, I recommend 3Dmark 2003 or 2005, but many games have FPS monitors built in, the problem with game monitors is accurately reproducing the same conditions for comparitive analysis.

Nice video card by the way.