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"the BIOS setting just sets an upper limit of how much the OS and drivers are allowed to ask for... not the static amount they get."
Not true... I have 256 Mb RAM, AGPAS set at 512 and it now asks 126 Mb for AGP. If I set the AGPAS back to 256 Mb it asks 40 Mb, with 128 it asks for 20 Mb.
"Setting the value too low will, as indicated in that thread, cause AGP texturing to stop working (can also cause a whole slew of other bugs). Setting it too high USUALLY doesn't hurt (the motherboard just compensates and fixes it to no more than your system RAM) but it CAN, since it's not specified."
When I had 128 Mb RAM, I had it set at 256 Mb all the time... With no problems at all... (That was before BIOS 1.008 of my Asus P2B, which allowes 512 Mb AGPAS)
If I might interject here, from what I understand it works like this, an array for pointers is allocated in ram before the OS boots, that's what the BIOS does, it sets up the array and the hardware registers for AGP hardware using it. Each pointer is for X amount of ram, a fixed amount that is hardware related, can't recall exactly what, 4 something. The OS takes it from there, requests for AGP memory are only fulfilled to the limits of the size of the array of pointers. That's basically what it's all about. If you set the array to be 4MB, then that's all the OS can allocate, set it to 256MB when you only have 128MB of ram and you won't have any problems until the OS needs to allocate 256MB of AGP ram, or never in other words. Another thing to consider is that some chips can't address really large amounts of AGP ram, the TNT for instance is limited to 48MB.
On performance, if all the textures will fit into local ram, then the AGP size doesn't matter. Otherwise, if there is a balancing act implemented in the drivers then reducing AGP ram might force more use of local memory, large AGP aperatures just ensures that benchmarks won't run out of room for the combined local and AGP memory.
How exactly are you finding out how much memory is allocated for AGP? What I said earlier is what is SUPPOSED to happen.
Possibilities:
- Motherboard manufacturer is doing something differently.
- Benchmarking program is checking the aperture size and only allocating based on a calculation of some percentage of the maximum.
I presume you're using Win98, right? And not the Win95+USB+AGP+SH+IT?
- Gurm
The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!
I'm the least you could do
If only life were as easy as you
I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
If only life were as easy as you
I would still get screwed
I got the best results with AGP 32 and with each increase in AGP size the results dropped. One thing to note is that I received only 1.2 FPS with 32MB textures and AGP set to 32.
I have: Asus P5A, K6-2 400, 196MB PC100, Mystique G200.
Nothing is overclocked and I'm just about running the latest drivers for everything.
Dave
Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice.
Lillo ...
i have a Gigabyte 6BXE .. no Bios entries for AGP aperture size ...
i worked with 6BXC before .. if i remember correctly .. it doesn't have that settin too.
So you can't change your AGP aperture size on these mobo's ...
But, don't worry ... it doesn't matter in real world .. or games ..
it matters only in 3Dmark99 and only in the 32 meg texture scores .. higher scores for higher aperture size ( this was tested on Red Fox with LX chipset ) ...
btw Lillo : GIGA BYTE RULEZZZZZZZ )
Gurm : what's the problem with win95 osr2 and agp in ur opinion ??
it's not bad at all ..
i tried both ... win98 and osr2 ...
no problems with agp in osr2
If it worked for you then GREAT! If not, welcome to the other 90%. Seriously, you will find that 90% of people experiencing strange problems related to drivers or AGP have Win95 OSR2 on their machine.
The problem is that Microsoft likes to release "minimal invasiveness" patches for Win9x. For NT, you get a "service pack", which changes pretty much every system file in your machine. For Win9x you get only the absolutely necessary new files. This is bad, because they often have to make compromises to make it work. Such is the case with AGP. Key system files are very different from Win95 to Win98... but not from Win95 to the USB patch.
Anyway, it's late. Sorry if I'm rambling. Just my opinion, but it's MUCH MUCH MUCH better to start off with a prepatched, reworked OS right off the bat. That's why I reinstall my machine so often. The only glitches I EVER experience are due to bad hardware or incomplete drivers - never because my system was a mess.
'Course, I gotta make big ol' backups and restore 'em all... kinda a pain...
- Gurm
The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!
I'm the least you could do
If only life were as easy as you
I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
If only life were as easy as you
I would still get screwed
Gurm : got your point .. i know win98 has built in support for AGP and USB .. and many other things .. like the TX chipset and up till the BX/ZX ... which doesn't let you do alot of patching and upgrades after the initial install of the OS ..kinda easier ..
and what you just said about win95 cauisng some problems with drivers or AGP made me think that osr2 is the cause of my G200 doesn't like AGP 2X at all .. tried it on 2 different mobo's ( gigabyte and red fox )
so maybee win98 will let me go to AGP 2X ???!!!
hmmm
but i won't upgrade to win98 just for that ..
and the only other problem i have is with OGL screen savers happens in 95 and 98 ...
something more related to the sbjetc of that thread .. i remeber that a program ( xgl200 maybee ?? ) a glide-to-dx wrapper can control the AGP aperture size through the configuration file .. but i don't know if that configuration is for this program only or is it permanent for all other programs ??
maybee the author of that program xgl200 can tell us .. he sometimes watch .. or anyone else ??
so if one program can do that .. i think there must a utility that can set the AGP size from within the OS for the users who doesn't have a setting in the bios
Or you could get that Soft BIOS Tweaker for BX chipsets, which has all options... it's floating around on the hardware pages. Pretty neato, although you have to pay the license fee before it lets you save the settings.
- Gurm
The Internet - where men are men, women are men, and teenage girls are FBI agents!
I'm the least you could do
If only life were as easy as you
I'm the least you could do, oh yeah
If only life were as easy as you
I would still get screwed
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