rec.autos.simulators

by **Beckett Richard-qswi2** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 18:42:35

Well Guys, I did some more AGP aperture size testing last night, and as the
old thread was getting a bit muddled I decided to start afresh.

When I initially tested, I was running an aperture of 256, so after seeing
an improvement at 128, then 64 being as bad as 256, I concluded I'd found
the sweet spot, then passed it.

I was wrong.

Last night I tested all aperture sizes.
(Quick refresh 128M memory GF2 32M)

4M, 8M and 32M all produced similar results, and worked OK, with no obvious
problems.
64M and 256M produced the worst results (i.e. lowest FR) with lots of
glitches in both GPL and GP3. GP3 also suffered from shadow problems, where
a black box momentarily flashed when entering a shadow, and also there were
occasional blue patches on the track. 256M was slightly worse.

128M produced the 2nd highest frame rates, with no glitches at all, but GP3
still had smaller occasional blue patches on the track.

Overall 16M performed perfectly, with slightly better frame rates than 128M.

I bumped into a couple of ITS guys this morning, and they both recommended
16M, as this allows the video card a total of 48M, which should easily cover
today's games.

I suppose theoretically a total of 64M (i.e. aperture of 32M) should become
the best as more games start taking advantage of the bigger GFX cards when
they become more popular (or should I say cheaper ;-))

R.

--
Posted from motgate.mot.com [129.188.136.100]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.racesimcentral.net/

by **Bert Middleto** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 19:22:26

>Well Guys, I did some more AGP aperture size testing last night, and as the
>old thread was getting a bit muddled I decided to start afresh.

>When I initially tested, I was running an aperture of 256, so after seeing
>an improvement at 128, then 64 being as bad as 256, I concluded I'd found
>the sweet spot, then passed it.

>I was wrong.

>Last night I tested all aperture sizes.
>(Quick refresh 128M memory GF2 32M)

>4M, 8M and 32M all produced similar results, and worked OK, with no obvious
>problems.
>64M and 256M produced the worst results (i.e. lowest FR) with lots of
>glitches in both GPL and GP3. GP3 also suffered from shadow problems, where
>a black box momentarily flashed when entering a shadow, and also there were
>occasional blue patches on the track. 256M was slightly worse.

>128M produced the 2nd highest frame rates, with no glitches at all, but GP3
>still had smaller occasional blue patches on the track.

>Overall 16M performed perfectly, with slightly better frame rates than 128M.

>I bumped into a couple of ITS guys this morning, and they both recommended
>16M, as this allows the video card a total of 48M, which should easily cover
>today's games.

>I suppose theoretically a total of 64M (i.e. aperture of 32M) should become
>the best as more games start taking advantage of the bigger GFX cards when
>they become more popular (or should I say cheaper ;-))

>R.

Well, IMO, these tests you ran and the conclusions you arrived at must
be specific to your system/mb. AGP aperature is just a size you
specify that *can* be used if your video card runs out of video ram.
Whether you set that at 64mb or 32mb should not make a difference to
performance, theoretically anyway.

by **Beckett Richard-qswi2** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 19:58:57

I don't really understand it all. I can see that 256 was very likely to be a
daft setting with 128m ram, though ;-)

Ooh...wait a minute. Maybe with higher settings it was trying to use the
memory, and reducing the amount available for other things, giving a
performance hit?

The only ones that were actually bad were 64 and 256. Like I said, I can
understand 256, but not why 64 was bad. Maybe it's a relative size
incompatibility thing? Whose nose?

R.

=-=-
Well, IMO, these tests you ran and the conclusions you arrived at must
be specific to your system/mb. AGP aperature is just a size you
specify that *can* be used if your video card runs out of video ram.
Whether you set that at 64mb or 32mb should not make a difference to
performance, theoretically anyway.

--
Posted from ftpbox.mot.com [129.188.136.101]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

by **Thom j** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 20:31:01

What happens then when you already have a GF2GTS'Pro 64meg card?
Use 64-megs or 32-megs in the bios. btw these are the only two choices
I have in my bios.. Tia... Thom_j.

| Well Guys, I did some more AGP aperture size testing last night, and as
the
| old thread was getting a bit muddled I decided to start afresh.
|
| When I initially tested, I was running an aperture of 256, so after seeing
| an improvement at 128, then 64 being as bad as 256, I concluded I'd found
| the sweet spot, then passed it.
|
| I was wrong.
|
| Last night I tested all aperture sizes.
| (Quick refresh 128M memory GF2 32M)
|
| 4M, 8M and 32M all produced similar results, and worked OK, with no
obvious
| problems.
| 64M and 256M produced the worst results (i.e. lowest FR) with lots of
| glitches in both GPL and GP3. GP3 also suffered from shadow problems,
where
| a black box momentarily flashed when entering a shadow, and also there
were
| occasional blue patches on the track. 256M was slightly worse.
|
| 128M produced the 2nd highest frame rates, with no glitches at all, but
GP3
| still had smaller occasional blue patches on the track.
|
| Overall 16M performed perfectly, with slightly better frame rates than
128M.
|
| I bumped into a couple of ITS guys this morning, and they both recommended
| 16M, as this allows the video card a total of 48M, which should easily
cover
| today's games.
|
| I suppose theoretically a total of 64M (i.e. aperture of 32M) should
become
| the best as more games start taking advantage of the bigger GFX cards when
| they become more popular (or should I say cheaper ;-))
|
| R.
|
|
| --
| Posted from motgate.mot.com [129.188.136.100]
| via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

---
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by **Beckett Richard-qswi2** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 22:11:55

Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

They say set AGP aperture to half system memory, but try other settings ;-)
On my system that'd be 64M which was the worst!
I'm going to give the other settings a test, I suppose something else could
be adversely affecting this, and maybe with all the settings listed 64M
would then perform better.

Good job I've nothing else to do ATM ;-)

What's the RAS opinion on them?

R.

=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dear Sir,

Please find the System Optimization Settings below:

BIOS Settings
-------------
PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Disabled
Video ROM BIOS Shadow - Disabled
Video RAM Shadow - Disabled
C8000 - DFFFF - All memory ranges should be Disabled
AGP Aperture Size - Half of your total amount of main system RAM, however
you should try different settings
Video Memory Cache Size - UC
PNP OS Installed - YES
Assign IRQ to VGA - YES
Resources Controlled By - AUTO

Windows Settings
----------------
Enable DMA on your hard drive
You can do so by:
Go into the Device Manager
Double-click on your hard drive which is listed under "Disk Drives"
Click "Settings"
Put a check mark in "DMA"
Manually force your swapfile to 150MB
You can do so by:
Go into System Properties
Click "Performance"
Click "Virtual Memory"
Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
Select your drive
Set the minimum to 150MB
Set the maximum to 170MB
Defrag your hard drive!
Shutdown unnecessary programs and TSR's, you should try and have as little
as you can loaded in the system tray.

--
Posted from motgate3.mot.com [144.189.100.103]
via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG

by **Ryan Mitchle** » Sat, 23 Jun 2001 23:37:03

According to the Geforce FAQ, setting your aperture size below 32MB disables
AGP. Apparently this may solve stability problems on some systems, but it is
not generally recommended.

Ryan

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faster-than-light travel is indeed possible, though research into economical
methods has been systematically suppressed by headlamp manufacturers
and their agents in the Congress.
--Todd Zwillich

by **Laurence Wilme** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 00:48:09

Interesting - and it fits. I checked all settings from 4 - 256 on my
system (Matrox G400 on P3B-F with 256 RAM) and found 64 was the
optimum setting. 16 and less was significantly slower, not much
difference in the other settings, though > 64 was just noticeably
slower.

--
Laurence Wilmer

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Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
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by **Bert Middleto** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 04:39:46

>Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

>They say set AGP aperture to half system memory,

I don't know why some people think that either. It all depends on how
much memory is on your video card. With less memory on the video card
then the higher you would set the aperature, with more memory then the
less system memory you would need to reserve. I've read tech sites
that say setting the aperature to half system ram is the wrong formula
to use for the reasons I state above.

by **Rob Adam** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 05:02:53

Maybe this will help. I don' t know if it's correct or not but it sounds
reasonable to me:

http://www.help.com/cgi-perl/reply/1/618/527?sidx=1867190&midx=697753...
2&from=http://help.search.com/search%3Fcat=230%26q=AGP%20aperture%26int.1099
=1%26catpath=/1&tag=st.hp.reply.r_bot

URL will probably wrap - copy and paste it into the address field of your
browser.

> >Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

> >They say set AGP aperture to half system memory,

> I don't know why some people think that either. It all depends on how
> much memory is on your video card. With less memory on the video card
> then the higher you would set the aperature, with more memory then the
> less system memory you would need to reserve. I've read tech sites
> that say setting the aperature to half system ram is the wrong formula
> to use for the reasons I state above.

by **Rafe McAulif** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 19:16:46

All of those settings are good, should help. Main ones which'll help
are setting DMA on your HDD in windoze, setting a static swap file (if
you don't have much RAM, but you've got 128mb, yeah?) and reducing TSR
proggys. Open c:/windows/system/msconfig.exe and choose the startup
tab. Untick all the options that have been added by programs that you
don't like/want, so they don't automatically load up.

A couple of other settings to increase performance by a fair margin
are memory timings. Usually under "advanced chipset options". Set the
CAS, RAS to CAS, etc. to 2 instead of 3. That'll increase memory
performance by 20-40% (as long as it works stably, which it does in
most cases)

Rafe Mc

>Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

>They say set AGP aperture to half system memory, but try other settings ;-)
>On my system that'd be 64M which was the worst!
>I'm going to give the other settings a test, I suppose something else could
>be adversely affecting this, and maybe with all the settings listed 64M
>would then perform better.

>Good job I've nothing else to do ATM ;-)

>What's the RAS opinion on them?

>R.

>=-=-=-=-=-=-
>Dear Sir,

>Please find the System Optimization Settings below:

>BIOS Settings
>-------------
>PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Disabled
>Video ROM BIOS Shadow - Disabled
>Video RAM Shadow - Disabled
>C8000 - DFFFF - All memory ranges should be Disabled
>AGP Aperture Size - Half of your total amount of main system RAM, however
>you should try different settings
>Video Memory Cache Size - UC
>PNP OS Installed - YES
>Assign IRQ to VGA - YES
>Resources Controlled By - AUTO

>Windows Settings
>----------------
>Enable DMA on your hard drive
>You can do so by:
>Go into the Device Manager
>Double-click on your hard drive which is listed under "Disk Drives"
>Click "Settings"
>Put a check mark in "DMA"
>Manually force your swapfile to 150MB
>You can do so by:
>Go into System Properties
>Click "Performance"
>Click "Virtual Memory"
>Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
>Select your drive
>Set the minimum to 150MB
>Set the maximum to 170MB
>Defrag your hard drive!
>Shutdown unnecessary programs and TSR's, you should try and have as little
>as you can loaded in the system tray.

by **Rafe McAulif** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 19:19:57

One thing you may want to try - disabling AGP 4x. This stops AGP
transfers, and so it may be good on your system, since you have such
variation with different agp aperatures. Usually under "advanced
chipset options".

Rafe Mc

>Well Guys, I did some more AGP aperture size testing last night, and as the
>old thread was getting a bit muddled I decided to start afresh.

>When I initially tested, I was running an aperture of 256, so after seeing
>an improvement at 128, then 64 being as bad as 256, I concluded I'd found
>the sweet spot, then passed it.

>I was wrong.

>Last night I tested all aperture sizes.
>(Quick refresh 128M memory GF2 32M)

>4M, 8M and 32M all produced similar results, and worked OK, with no obvious
>problems.
>64M and 256M produced the worst results (i.e. lowest FR) with lots of
>glitches in both GPL and GP3. GP3 also suffered from shadow problems, where
>a black box momentarily flashed when entering a shadow, and also there were
>occasional blue patches on the track. 256M was slightly worse.

>128M produced the 2nd highest frame rates, with no glitches at all, but GP3
>still had smaller occasional blue patches on the track.

>Overall 16M performed perfectly, with slightly better frame rates than 128M.

>I bumped into a couple of ITS guys this morning, and they both recommended
>16M, as this allows the video card a total of 48M, which should easily cover
>today's games.

>I suppose theoretically a total of 64M (i.e. aperture of 32M) should become
>the best as more games start taking advantage of the bigger GFX cards when
>they become more popular (or should I say cheaper ;-))

>R.

by **Larr** » Sun, 24 Jun 2001 23:57:25

On my system, the difference between CAS2 and CAS3 was only 8%. I think
20-40% is being a bit optimistic :)

I only deal with properly configured, non-overclocked systems. YMMV.

In this case, ASUS A7V133, 512MB Micron CAS3 RAM, 1.2Ghz DDR Athlon.

I'll buy CAS2 if it's about the same price (which it is right now), but when
I bought my RAM there was a $40 premium for CAS2 and it just didn't make
sense monetarily.

Now, at $60 for 256MB Crucial 222 memory, this is somewhat a moot point :)

-Larry

> All of those settings are good, should help. Main ones which'll help
> are setting DMA on your HDD in windoze, setting a static swap file (if
> you don't have much RAM, but you've got 128mb, yeah?) and reducing TSR
> proggys. Open c:/windows/system/msconfig.exe and choose the startup
> tab. Untick all the options that have been added by programs that you
> don't like/want, so they don't automatically load up.

> A couple of other settings to increase performance by a fair margin
> are memory timings. Usually under "advanced chipset options". Set the
> CAS, RAS to CAS, etc. to 2 instead of 3. That'll increase memory
> performance by 20-40% (as long as it works stably, which it does in
> most cases)

> Rafe Mc

> >Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

> >They say set AGP aperture to half system memory, but try other settings
;-)
> >On my system that'd be 64M which was the worst!
> >I'm going to give the other settings a test, I suppose something else
could
> >be adversely affecting this, and maybe with all the settings listed 64M
> >would then perform better.

> >Good job I've nothing else to do ATM ;-)

> >What's the RAS opinion on them?

> >R.

> >=-=-=-=-=-=-
> >Dear Sir,

> >Please find the System Optimization Settings below:

> >BIOS Settings
> >-------------
> >PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Disabled
> >Video ROM BIOS Shadow - Disabled
> >Video RAM Shadow - Disabled
> >C8000 - DFFFF - All memory ranges should be Disabled
> >AGP Aperture Size - Half of your total amount of main system RAM, however
> >you should try different settings
> >Video Memory Cache Size - UC
> >PNP OS Installed - YES
> >Assign IRQ to VGA - YES
> >Resources Controlled By - AUTO

> >Windows Settings
> >----------------
> >Enable DMA on your hard drive
> >You can do so by:
> >Go into the Device Manager
> >Double-click on your hard drive which is listed under "Disk Drives"
> >Click "Settings"
> >Put a check mark in "DMA"
> >Manually force your swapfile to 150MB
> >You can do so by:
> >Go into System Properties
> >Click "Performance"
> >Click "Virtual Memory"
> >Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
> >Select your drive
> >Set the minimum to 150MB
> >Set the maximum to 170MB
> >Defrag your hard drive!
> >Shutdown unnecessary programs and TSR's, you should try and have as
little
> >as you can loaded in the system tray.

by **Rafe McAulif** » Mon, 25 Jun 2001 18:12:14

Well, I'm talking purely memory performance, benchmarked with Sandra
mem benchmark. I was getting about 230-240 mb/s at CAS3, then 300-310
mb/s at CAS2. So that's about 30% roughly. As far as system
performance goes, probably only 5-10% boost but it's still a boost.
That's on my old oc'ed celeron.

RAM prices certainly are cheaper now, I just got 256mb of CAS2 PC150
RAM, which works a treat. Same price as my old pc133 128mb stick only
a few mths ago :)

Rafe Mc

>On my system, the difference between CAS2 and CAS3 was only 8%. I think
>20-40% is being a bit optimistic :)

>I only deal with properly configured, non-overclocked systems. YMMV.

>In this case, ASUS A7V133, 512MB Micron CAS3 RAM, 1.2Ghz DDR Athlon.

>I'll buy CAS2 if it's about the same price (which it is right now), but when
>I bought my RAM there was a $40 premium for CAS2 and it just didn't make
>sense monetarily.

>Now, at $60 for 256MB Crucial 222 memory, this is somewhat a moot point :)

>-Larry

>> All of those settings are good, should help. Main ones which'll help
>> are setting DMA on your HDD in windoze, setting a static swap file (if
>> you don't have much RAM, but you've got 128mb, yeah?) and reducing TSR
>> proggys. Open c:/windows/system/msconfig.exe and choose the startup
>> tab. Untick all the options that have been added by programs that you
>> don't like/want, so they don't automatically load up.

>> A couple of other settings to increase performance by a fair margin
>> are memory timings. Usually under "advanced chipset options". Set the
>> CAS, RAS to CAS, etc. to 2 instead of 3. That'll increase memory
>> performance by 20-40% (as long as it works stably, which it does in
>> most cases)

>> Rafe Mc

>> >Just got this from Hercules Tech Support.

>> >They say set AGP aperture to half system memory, but try other settings
>;-)
>> >On my system that'd be 64M which was the worst!
>> >I'm going to give the other settings a test, I suppose something else
>could
>> >be adversely affecting this, and maybe with all the settings listed 64M
>> >would then perform better.

>> >Good job I've nothing else to do ATM ;-)

>> >What's the RAS opinion on them?

>> >R.

>> >=-=-=-=-=-=-
>> >Dear Sir,

>> >Please find the System Optimization Settings below:

>> >BIOS Settings
>> >-------------
>> >PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Disabled
>> >Video ROM BIOS Shadow - Disabled
>> >Video RAM Shadow - Disabled
>> >C8000 - DFFFF - All memory ranges should be Disabled
>> >AGP Aperture Size - Half of your total amount of main system RAM, however
>> >you should try different settings
>> >Video Memory Cache Size - UC
>> >PNP OS Installed - YES
>> >Assign IRQ to VGA - YES
>> >Resources Controlled By - AUTO

>> >Windows Settings
>> >----------------
>> >Enable DMA on your hard drive
>> >You can do so by:
>> >Go into the Device Manager
>> >Double-click on your hard drive which is listed under "Disk Drives"
>> >Click "Settings"
>> >Put a check mark in "DMA"
>> >Manually force your swapfile to 150MB
>> >You can do so by:
>> >Go into System Properties
>> >Click "Performance"
>> >Click "Virtual Memory"
>> >Select "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings"
>> >Select your drive
>> >Set the minimum to 150MB
>> >Set the maximum to 170MB
>> >Defrag your hard drive!
>> >Shutdown unnecessary programs and TSR's, you should try and have as
>little
>> >as you can loaded in the system tray.

rec.autos.simulators

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.

AGP Aperture size - more testing.