What is Graphic Aperture?

[JD32]

In bios, what is graphic aperture? and what should I set the value to?
I have Radeon 9700 pro 128MB. my MB is P4C800-E Deluxe.
Thanks

 

[bsmithy]

everyone will say double your video ram but i'd say if it aint broke...

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: JD32
In bios, what is graphic aperture? and what should I set the value to? I have Radeon 9700 pro 128MB. my MB is P4C800-E Deluxe. Thanks

It's the amount of system RAM that you'll let your video card use if it runs out of onboard RAM. Personally, I'd say pick a number less than your total system RAM and use it.

 

[tallman45]

Use 64mb or 128mb either way you will likely never use it with a 128mb video card

 

[OverVolt]

The more memory you have onboard your Vid card the less AGP Aperture you need. For my 128mb card i set the aperture to 128mb.

 

[John]

Originally posted by: tallman45
Use 64mb or 128mb either way you will likely never use it with a 128mb video card

 

[JBT]

I would say 64 or 128 is good. I don't think that with a 9700 Pro you are going ot play many games that need system ram for. This setting is mostly geared for older cards with less that 128 mb video memory.

 

[AIWGuru]

ATI's drivers will not "benefit" from greater than 64MB apeture.
Do not set it any larger.
To answer your question: a graphics apeture is a portion of system ram which can be allocated to the videocard's framebuffer (across the AGP bus) when you run out of local memory. For example, if you have a 64MB card and run 3Dmark03 (which uses more than 96MB of local buffer) it will crash each time if you have a 32MB apeture. If it's 64MB, the bench will run successfully. Of course, since you've got a 128MB card, it doesn't really matter what you have it set to right now but 64MB is the recommended setting.