What is Side banding ?

[UnseenMenace]

I have a Elsa Gforce 256 32mb fitted with a blue orb and when looking through SI Sandra I obtained this info, and as clearly visable the card supports something called 'Side Band' so I have 3 questions
(1) what is Side Band
(2) Should I turn it on ?
(3) How do i turn it on (Abit KT7A-Raid mobo)

AGP Version, 2
Bus Speed 88, mHz
Max data rate, 4x
Side Band Enabled, No
Side Band Support, Yes
Fast Writes Enabled, No
Aperture size, 128 mb

 

[LimeyGreg]

Sideband Addressing, also know as Fast Writing is a way to speed up AGP transfer of data. Requests for data xfer are sent along additional data request path rather than wait fot the bus to come free before requesting.

I believe I read somewhere that at 2X and 4X it hardly makes a difference as the card is running about as fast as it can anyway. I seem to recall that it may have caused a reduction in performance in some instances.

I have a feeling that this function hasn't really caught on with the software industry because of the lack in performance increase.

Look here http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/faqagp.html