Should I leave AGP fastwrite on or off?

[OMGoddess]

What is the purpose of Fast write anyways? And is it good for your computer? I'm leaving it off for now.

 

[Need4Speed]

on

 

[Megatomic]

If your system is stable with Fastwrites On, leave it on. If your system is not stable with Fastwrites On, turn it off.

It is supposed to increase AGP performance. I have never had a problem with leaving it on.

 

[caz67]

Leave it on.

 

[Algere]

I left mines off (conflicts with sound card under gaming mode). If you wanna be safe leave Fastwrites off, the AGP bus is fast enough without it and the performance difference between Fastwrites on and off are pretty negligible.

P.S. Purpose of Fastwrites = Allows video card to talk directly to the CPU bypassing the AGP bus or vice versa.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Actually, FastWrites are intended to accelerate data traffic from the host CPU to the video card's memory, when initiated directly by the host CPU, AFAIK. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to leave FastWrites enabled, it helps with some forms of CPU-intensive software-based video decoding and playback, but on some systems with marginal hardware, it may cause problems while playing 3D games.

 

[caz67]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Actually, FastWrites are intended to accelerate data traffic from the host CPU to the video card's memory, when initiated directly by the host CPU, AFAIK. Under normal circumstances, you should be able to leave FastWrites enabled, it helps with some forms of CPU-intensive software-based video decoding and playback, but on some systems with marginal hardware, it may cause problems while playing 3D games.

 

[grabadude]

If you are experiencing problems in games try to disable fastwrites.

 

[IPLaw]

Fastwrites can make a huge difference for software-based video decoding. On my A64 3000+, 9800Pro, PVR 250 machine, the software decoder in Sage Tv eats about 60% of my cpu to display tv in a window with fastwrites off, whereas it only uses 10% cpu with fastwrites on.

 

[Algere]

How does Fast writes decrease CPU usage with your PCI connected PVR 250 when it's a AGP related function?

I can see the possibility that it could help CPU usage e.g. on a ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro since both tv tuner and video card are connected via AGP.

 

[IPLaw]

I'm not sure exactly how it decreases my cpu usage, but I'm guessing that it has to do with any software video decoding, because the image is decoded by the cpu in system memory and then transferred across the agp bus to the vid card. The fact that the image comes from a pci video-in card has nothing to do with it. I get the same results when using windvd to play mpg files on my hdd.

Good AGP fastwrites Link