AGP speed

[chu]

Ok. I have a Radeon 9600xt 128mb. I looked in the Smartgart tab and it shows my AGP speed is set to 1x. Is that bad?

I looked and found that my mobo (Asus A7nc266-c)can support up to 4x, but when I try to change the speed in Smartgart it reboots and goes back to 1x.

First, will I notice a change in performance from going to 1x to 4x? If so how would I go about changing it to 4x.

With newer games my PC seems to be having problems running them. With far cry for instance the game will run fine then all of a sudden just freezes up. Not sure why.

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

With newer games my PC seems to be having problems running them. With far cry for instance the game will run fine then all of a sudden just freezes up. Not sure why.

Probably a FarCry issue, the game is very wierd, any little thing will make it shoot to desktop or restart. :frown:

 

[DreamThrall]

You might want to look around for AGP related entries in your BIOS setup. Make sure it is set on an automatic detection setting if there is one. AIDA32 (www.aida32.hu) is a good utility for taking a look at supported modes and other useless info about your computer. It'll also give you hints and suggestions if it thinks that anything looks funny about the setup of your computer.

 

[SidewinderX]

yeah, seems like you have it locked to 1x in BIOS. Boot up, hit del, or f1,or f2, or whatever youre mobo's BIOS is, then looks for that setting there.

 

[chu]

i couldn't find any AGP speed settings in my bios...

 

[poseyjmac]

what version of catalyst are you running?

also make sure fast writes are off at all times. this can be a bios setting or a setting in the catalyst

 

[chu]

i got 4.6....

 

[poseyjmac]

do you have latest bios for motherboard?

 

[ailevation]

:x Is there a program out where you can change your aperture size?

 

[DiSTuRbEd]

:x Is there a program out where you can change your aperture size?

Yeah it comes with the pc, entitled "BIOS"

 

[Asus]

There is not reason to change Apeture Size.
64mb or 128mb is what I would have it set to. My Asus board came with 64mb as default while my current MSI board came with 128mb as default.

 

[Loshadka]

What hthe hell is aparature size?

 

[Revisedsoul]

i belive it is the amout of ram the card uses when processing. but i coudl be wrong usually i have it set to half or full amout of ram my card is

 

[ACLeroK212]

chu, i had this same problem with my 9800pro when i first put together my computer. my mobo supports 8x speed but smartgart wouldn't hold a setting higher than 4x. i just updated the catalyst drivers from the ati website and everything is good now.

on a side note: i noticed my aperture size is set at 64mb in the bios. is there a benefit to increasing this to 128mb? the reason i ask is when i'm playing most games (most notably bf1942) i get a little pause/stutter every 2-3 minutes for like 2 seconds that keeps repeating like clockwork. i keep trying everything to get rid of this but nothing has worked so far. could this have anything to do with aperture size?

 

[chu]

I believe I have the latest BIOS. I have an Asus A7N266-C mobo, using the 1004 BIOS from asus.com.

 

[Asus]

It would more likely be system memory or resources.
AGP apeture does basicly nothing for today's games.
In the past AGP Apeture was used when they had 4mb graphics cards and the textures needed more memory so they mapped system memory (AGP Apeture) to be used. The more graphics memory you have the lower the AGP Apeture should be set.
Today Graphics cards have more than enough for all of the textures needed. Setting AGP Apeture to half the graphics card memory is a false idea although it gets you where you need to be.

 

[ailevation]

Yeah it comes with the pc, entitled "BIOS"

Yeah, but you've never heard of an OEM Bios .

 

[dream431ca]

I believe apature size should be half of your memory on the graphics card. That's what someone told me anyway.

 

[smsKONG]

chu, i had this same problem with my 9800pro when i first put together my computer. my mobo supports 8x speed but smartgart wouldn't hold a setting higher than 4x. i just updated the catalyst drivers from the ati website and everything is good now.

on a side note: i noticed my aperture size is set at 64mb in the bios. is there a benefit to increasing this to 128mb? the reason i ask is when i'm playing most games (most notably bf1942) i get a little pause/stutter every 2-3 minutes for like 2 seconds that keeps repeating like clockwork. i keep trying everything to get rid of this but nothing has worked so far. could this have anything to do with aperture size?

I did some benchmarking on the issue, and got a higher score on 3D mark03 every time I upped my aperature size up to 128MB, beyond that it made no difference. Oh and the difference it did make was naff all in real terms- eg score of 4591 to 4691 to 4791max.
I've also read that it should be set to half the size of your GPU memory, then again reliable sources have told me- double your GPU mem and also I've seen it stated as the best setting is the same as your GPU memory!!!!
I've got 128MB of memory on my card and I use an aperature size of 128MB, as I've stated tho- I came to this number from benchmarking so I would suggest you do the same :|

I've also seen the question "what's the difference between AGP x1 and x4?"
well to put it simply the base data transfer level is 66MHz so x1 is 66MHz and so x4 is just that: 66x4 = 264MHz and so on :cheese: