Author Topic: AGP Aperture size = more FPS (Read 340 times)

Mickey1992 · « **on:** January 18, 2002, 07:31:21 PM »

I got this suggestion off an another board. Someone said that if you cranked up your motherboards AGP Aperture Size, it would increase you frame rate. So here is what I found:

Pentium III 600 with a GeForce 2 400MX and 448 MB RAM.

With my AGP Aperture set to 64MB, 800x600 32bit color, Mip mapping turned on, offline using Mindanao at A1 north runway with a JU88 firing front gun........I get 23 FPS.

If I set my AGP Aperture to 256MB, with the above test I can get 29 FPS.

I only did a quick test because I really don't know what this motherboard setting does. Online AH seems a bit smoother and I don't seem to take such a huge FPS hit in smoke anymore.

Anyone that can tell me what this setting does?

Maverick · « **Reply #1 on:** January 18, 2002, 09:41:41 PM »

Mickey,

I just got a bit of advice from the bbs of the manufacturer of my geforce vid card. In the FAQ file it said to set the agp port to one half your RAM amount. That is not vid ram but system ram. I tried that but it may have hosed my AH game. I get an error signing on now that won't let the game load. It could be something else too.

Mav

Kratzer · « **Reply #2 on:** January 18, 2002, 11:04:06 PM »

You just have to play around with it till you find the fastest one. I reduced my aperture size from 64 to 32 and my 3dmark went up 120 points.

Skuzzy · « **Reply #3 on:** January 19, 2002, 02:26:39 PM »

Also depends on the video driver for the card as well. Most NVidia drivers like to use up a lot of memory, the more you give the driver, the more it will take.

With the 12.41 drivers and a 64MB NVidia card (the card type really does not matter), if you set the AGP aperature to 128MB, the driver will consume 92MB of combined AGP/video memory, and that is immediately after DX is initialized, before anything is loaded from the application.
I really do not know what they are doing with all that ram.

Anyway, if you reset the AGP aperature down to 64MB, then the card takes 52MB of combined AGP/video memory.

ATI's Radeon family uses a lot too, but it caps at about 76MB, whether you have 128MB or 64MB AGP aperature and a 64MB video card.

Oh, all this was tested at 1024x768x32 bit. The amount of memory used goes up significantly as you increase your video resolution for either manufacturer.

I usually use the above resolution for all games, so I end up setting my AGP to 64MB, but if you play at higher resolutions, you may need to increase the amount of AGP memory.

Hope that helps.