"AGP Aperture" & "UMA Frame Buffer"

[Synomenon]

I have a PCI 256MB Radeon x1550 in my old PC. In the BIOS, there are two selections under "On-Chip VGA Settings":

AGP Aperture Size

UMA Frame Buffer Size


Since I'm not using the motherboard's built in video AND it's a PCI video card, what should I set these to? "AGP Aperture Size" ranges from 32MB to 2GB and "UMA Frame Buffer Size" ranges from 8MB to 128MB.

 

[speckedhoncho]

I had problems when doing Windows Updates in XP SP2. I was/am using an AGP-based system. The card is a 7800GS 256MB AGP card. When the blue screen of death arrived, I went into the BIOS, and, after some thought, set the Aperture Size to the total memory on the card, 256MB. This solved my problem.

 

[miker75]

Set the UMA frame buffer to the lowest setting (if you're not using it.. and it'll probably deactivate anyway when you plug in a PCI graphics card... does Windows report the correct amount of RAM? If so, then it's disabled)..

AGP aperture size shouldn't make any difference, as you're running over PCI..

 

[Synomenon]

If I were to use the ATI Radeon 9100 IGP instead of the PCI video card, what would I set the "AGP Aperture Size" and "UMA Frame Buffer" to, to maximize the ATI Radeon 9100 IGP's performance?

 

[Stumps]

Usually the Aperture performs best if set to 128mb (1GB system ram) or 256mb (2GB system ram), however if you are using a PCI video card then this setting isn't needed as you aren't using the AGP bus.

the UMA frame buffer refer to how much memory the onboard Graphics card uses, if you have a decent amount of ram (1GB or better) you would normally set this to either 64mb or 128mb, but as you are using a PCI video card you should just disable this as it isn't needed.

 

[Synomenon]

Thanks guys. I've set the UMA Frame Buffer to the lowest setting and when I put the PCI video card in, a new item appeared in the AGP Aperture Size. Below 32MB, "None" magically appeared.