BEWARE: AGP Aperture > 64 Mb may cause lockups/crashes

[gpk]

Just a quick warning to anyone setting the Agp Aperture to > 64 Mb.
I forgot I increaded it past 64 mb the previous and was getting crashes in UT after about 20 seconds.
Slave Zero demo refused to launch at all.
Suffering from a cold and playing some Q3A (which didn't lock up) I forgot that I had changed it and spent a few frustrating hours trying to find the problem (duh, i know).

Just thought I'd spare anyone else some grief.

gpk
P.S. Is it me or is UT better than Q3A !?


p3-450@504
g400-32 Mb vanilla @115% OC
Diamond Mx-300 w/ Cambridge 4 point suround
14 Gb Ibm 7200 Rpm HD + 13 Gb Quantum KA 7200 RPM HD
Optiquest V95 19"
Cable modem ( poor hpbs )

[DrFizix]

I can confirm this.

I've had multiple Win98 crashes in Explorer, Internet Explorer, and Outlook Express with AGP aperature set to 256MB. I don't have those crashes with the aperature set to 64MB.

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System specs (well, everyone else is doing it!):

Asus P2B-F motherboard
Pentium III 450, no overclock
G400MAX/32DH, no overclock
192 MB PC100 RAM
SB Live Value
Hauppauge WinTV PCI
ReelMagic Hollywood+
USR 56K ISA
Win98 SE

[gpk]

ADDENDUM: I forgot to list my complete system specs (this damned cold!)

Asus P3B-F
p3-450@504
128 MB pc100
g400-32 Mb vanilla @115% OC
Diamond Mx-300 w/ Cambridge 4 point suround
14 Gb Ibm 7200 Rpm HD + 13 Gb Quantum KA 7200 RPM HD
Win 98 SE
Optiquest V95 19"
Cable modem

[DuRaNgO]

my Abit BE6 doesn't do this
jim

------------------
PIII-500mhz @ 620 ! with an Abit BE6 mobo
128mb pc-100
Mill G400 (YAHOO!!!) 32mb @ 167/208 with MGATweak-417mhz, (2.5, 2, 2.5), PD 5.41 & bios 1.5-22
Maxtor 14.3 gb Uata66 hdd
SB Live!
Winblows 98se & DX7
32 lbs. of fans, heatsinks and aluminum ductwork
3DMark Result 5954.69 3DMarks
Synthetic CPU 3D Speed 9325.69 CPU 3DMarks
Rasterizer Score 2791.72 3DRasterMarks
Game 1 - Race 65.07 FPS
Game 2 - First Person 54.89 FPS
Fill Rate 268.79 MTexels/s

[MotherDawg]

Abit... Pffffff... ;-)))

My SOYO doesn't do that either.

Cya



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Celery 366 OCed @ 458(83), Soyo 6BA+III, 64MB SDRAM, Millennium G400 DualHead (486 cpu fan), SB Live! Value, FBall KA 13.1Gig (7200rpm), Mitsumi CR-4804TE CD-RW, Intel based 21140 10/100 NIC, Nortel Networks HSA1300 1-meg ADSL modem and also a ModemBlaster DI5630... enough!

[Gurm]

Well, see... in theory the AGP aperture should only be set to half your total memory. Because setting it higher means AGP could request up to your whole system memory - or more!

BUT... many motherboards don't correctly implement AGP aperture, (ABIT included, *groan*), and therefore Exhibit strange behavior if you don't set it high enough.

It also is largely dependent on the drivers.

I have been extremely lucky in that my ABIT board(s) have always been very happy with my G400 (BH6, BX6, BX6v2, BE6 - I've had 'em all in the past 9 months) and an aperture set to 128MB (half of my 256MB total).

But please don't advise people to turn DOWN their AGP apertures, as turning this setting UP to 256MB is one of the first (and most effective) troubleshooting steps we tell people to take.

And it works, for most motherboards. It seems you people have something in common - ASUS motherboards. Maybe we should test further and amend our recommendations when people have ASUS's.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Keiv]

I will also second the topic.

I too experience problems with my agp aperture set > 64 Mb; GPFs, crashes, and random lockups. With it set at 64 I'm as stable as can be. I've got 128 Megs of RAM.