What is the Aperture size in AGP properties?

[jadison]

What does "aperture" mean, and what does changing its settings in BIOS do?

Basically a definition and an explanation would do.

Thank You

-jd-

[RCN_Moose]

If I'm not mistaken, the aperture size is the amount of physical ram (system) that your graphics card can use for textures and what not.

Moose http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/smile.gif

[Brydon]

It is and remember though that itis a lot slower than video memory so it is better to get a vid card with enough onboard memory to cop...I want a 64mb Geforce 2 GTS http://sysopt.earthweb.com/forum/wink.gif.

[Tom Pico]

Check you video card website. I have a Matrox G400 Max w/32 mb and Matrox recommends 256mb aperature size or 1/2 of actual ram. Really surprised me that they recommended 256mb for a card which already has 32mb's.

I have 256mb ram so I set my aperature size for 128mb -- I haven't noticed any difference visually. The only difference I've noticed is that 3D Mark 2000 would skip some tests when I was at 64 aperature size and now runs those tests since I now have enough mb's to allow the test. The bench mark value is, however, the same. I suspect that very few, if any, programs are taking advantage of the extra 64mb's of ram now available. Probably the 32mb on the video card and the 64mb aperature size are enough for any sane program.