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Aperature Size ?

K

kamranziadar

Banned
Today i was looking in my System BIOS and realized that Aperature size was set to 128MB, but on the other hand i have 6800GT which is 256MB why in the hell BIOS put the Aperature size to 128MB and the Primary Video was PCI.
I have MSI K8N Neo Platinum Motherboard, can some body explain that to me and tell me what to do or it is suppose to be like that, i mean i can change the Aperature size to 256MB, and also the Primary Video to AGP, but why it is like that?
 
you have 5 PCI slot and 1 AGP if your AGP card craps out or AGP slot is fried you are SOL if your bios is set to boot AGP..unless you reset your bios ..but that can create other problems if you need some special settings for your component combo, plus PCI cards is cheaper than dirt and you don't have to resort to blind flash if you are one of those tingering kind.

Aperature size is sys ram used incase your texture buffer is full which is rare to begin with...only in games like Doom3..and such that figuer actually matters for cards with less than 256MB of onboard. so 128/256..doesn't make a diff in your case...at this time.
 
In most cases, the primary video, or "VGA Init First" is just which bus the chipset checks first for a video card. Setting it correctly will make the system POST faster, but I think that's about it. And yeah, Chesebert's right about the AGP aperture. That's how much system RAM the AGP card can use if its onboard memory becomes filled. 128MB is usually a good default.
 
From Adrian's RojakPot The Definitive BIOS Optimization Guide

AGP Aperture Size

Common Options : 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256

Quick Review

This BIOS feature does two things. It selects the size of the AGP aperture and it determines the size of the GART (Graphics Address Relocation Table).

The aperture is a portion of the PCI memory address range that is dedicated for use as AGP memory address space while the GART is a translation table that translates AGP memory addresses into actual memory addresses which are often fragmented. The GART allows the graphics card to see the memory region available to it as a contiguous piece of memory range.

Host cycles that hit the aperture range are forwarded to the AGP bus without need for translation. The aperture size also determines the maximum amount of system memory that can be allocated to the AGP graphics card for texture storage.

Please note that the AGP aperture is merely address space, not actual physical memory in use. Although it is very common to hear people recommending that the AGP aperture size should be half the size of system memory, that is wrong!

The requirement for AGP memory space shrinks as the graphics card's local memory increases in size. This is because the graphics card will have more local memory to dedicate to texture storage. So, if you upgrade to a graphics card with more memory, you shouldn't be "deceived" into thinking that you will need even more AGP memory! On the contrary, a smaller AGP memory space will be required.

It is recommended that you keep the AGP aperture around 64MB to 128MB in size, even if your graphics card has a lot of onboard memory. This allows flexibility in the event that you actually need extra memory for texture storage. It will also keep the GART (Graphics Address Relocation Table) within a reasonable size.
Click to expand...

 
This was posted a couple of times (I even posted one) but here's the scoop: Basically you want that value to be no more than half of your card's memory size. For a 6800GT (same card I had) you'll want no more than 128. You can set it higher for like an extra FPS if you're lucky, but it kills stability. If your card is running choppy or unstable, lower it. Just like AGP 4x, you won't notice a difference.
 
Originally posted by: Mrvile
Originally posted by: 2Xtreme21
I thought it was no more than 1/2 of your system RAM.
Click to expand...

No. Some of us run 2GB ram, with an AGP apature of 1GB? Damn.
Click to expand...

My mobo, ironically, supports 1GB aperature sizes. Plus I said no more than, but meh, I honestly do not know what mine is even set at. It's pretty much useless anymore with the high amount of onboard RAM on video cards and rarely does it yield any kind of performance improvement with it set one way vs. another.
 
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