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in BIOS, Graphics Aperture Size, HOW does it work?

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Exiler

Member
Joined
Feb 17, 2001
Location
Ontario, Canada
Just HOW exactly does it effect its performance in Games and all? I mean you can set it from 4MB to all the way to 256MB, just how does that effect the video card?

I have a Asus P2B Rev 1.02 with AGP 1.0 Compliant, and since the mobo is not a 2.0 Compliant, my Geforce 2 MX 32MB seems to freeze a lot at higher Aperture size than lower Aperture size.

The term freeze meaning is that, in say desktop, the mouse freezes say for about 1 sec and then control is given back to me, then again it happens, this happens for about 10 freezes and then goes away.
These freezes are like hickups.

But I noticed that if the Aperture size is at 256MB, the hickups are a lot higher, but when I set the Aperture at 4MB, it hardly happens, so what exactly does the Aperture do?

Strange this never happened to me when I used a ATI RAGE PRO 8MB Card.

Using 6.50 Detonator 3
Win98Se
Asus 440BX mobo P2B (Rev 1.02)
64MB PC100 RAM.
UDMA/33 6.2 GB HDD
 
Basically, all it is, is a setting that allows you to share your on board memory with the card.
I have 256 megs of memory, and run my AGP sharing at 128. Most say to run it at half, others say to run it up to what you have onboard. However when I do run mine at 256, I get problems.

It also depends on the cards settings. Just remember, when it does share on board memory, that memory will be slower than whats on the card.
AKDUDE
 
otherwise you can greatly improve the graphics performance setting a 4MB for aperture size. the more aperture u give to the video card to map more detailed the graphics will be, however graphics will demand too much more of the video card and performance will doubtless decrease. id recommend you to set an aperture size of 64MB (standard), but - that should depend of the games you use to play. make some tests and pay attention to the quality of the image rendered. its difficult to notify performance modifications... best thing to try is to download 3DMark and then start to test the system.
 
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