Let me start by saying that I thought about posting this in the hardware forum but since it is related to the blurries, I thought it would get more traffic in here. In addition, I am no authority on these issues so make changes to your rig at your own risk. These are basically the observations of a hardware noob.From everything I have read about AGP aperture, it is described a "back up" video memory. When your video card runs out of memory, a portion of your system memory is allocated to back up your video card.To me, that sounds like if you have 1024GB system memory, and your AGP aperture is set to 256MB, you really only have 768MB of system memory because the rest is allocated to back up video memory.Now looking at Steve Lacy's post on blurries ( http://www.steve-lacey.com/blogarchives/20..._blurries.shtml ). In his caveat at the bottom, he states that blurries can be the result of video memory starvation. Could it be that if you have the blurries, and you add some RAM, increase your AGP aperture, you can help cure bluuries? Conversely, if you seem to be running low on RAM, but you don't have the blurries, can you reduce the AGP aperture to free up more RAM and improve overall performance?I wonder if there is a sweet spot between the amount of video memory, AGP aperture and your amount of RAM.I have read that some say that the amount of page file in use listed in task manager is not a good indication of the amount of RAM that your system is using to run FS. Is there a accurate way to figure out how much RAM your FS set up takes to run? If you know that answer, you can set your AGP aperture appropriately and purchase more RAM if necessary. BTW, I played with 3DMark05 and different aperture settings and I didn't notice any notable differences in the scores. Logically though, it seems like it should make a difference.

With anything like this the result's vary from system to system. The best advice I can give is the trial and error method. I also found that with this method I spent more time tweaking than I did flying! ;)

The rule of thumb in the old days was 2 x graphics mem for AGP.I say the old days as AGP only supports a miximum 256mb aperture max. PCI-E does not use an aperture. You will not likelyt see any improvement in the real world irresepecive of the vid card unless you have OB.As for system ram, the amount ram used depends on what scenery, what ac and weather and so on. On average a clean FS uses 600mb physical ram in XP under a normal system starup load. I have had the system page out over 2 gig though on some addon sceneries.The vast majority of benchmarks are synthetic, they only test specific components under ideal conditions. Thy are in no way representative of real world performance except in the most basic manner.So many of the "technologies" of AGP were never really that useful or had much of an impact on performance. One area that might help is the AGP and PCI latency times. Even though a lot of tweak guides recommend lowering latency this is misleading on a game like FS. I have mine set to 128 (2 x the recommended) as this allows PCI devices to hold on to the bus longer and allows fore smoother transitions and a cleaner ride. You may need to play with yours to find where its happy, but 64 or higher should be where you want it.These are set in the bios.CheersShad

My personal secret to TOTALLY eliminating blurries was to limit the visibility in both FS and FSUIPC, limit the FPS to 17fps, and a few fs9.cfg tweaks that I found on this board. Now I have a crisp view everywhere and no blurries whatsover anymore.G'luck!

Jeff if you are having enough blurries to bother you, something is wrong with your configuration. This could be related to motherboard chipset drivers that enable AGP slot to function correctly not being installed. It could also be related to having your OS allocate too much memory for "backgroud services" instead of "applications." Both of these issues will cause very significant issues with blurries in my past experience. I have no troubles with blurries, and use the following settings in FS9.cfg:[DISPLAY.Device.NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT by TweaksRUs.0]Mode=1600x1200x32TriLinear=1[DISPLAY]UPPER_FRAMERATE_LIMIT=25TEXTURE_BANDWIDTH_MULT=240[TERRAIN]TERRAIN_ERROR_FACTOR=100.000000TERRAIN_MIN_DEM_AREA=10.000000TERRAIN_MAX_DEM_AREA=100.000000TERRAIN_MAX_VERTEX_LEVEL=21TERRAIN_TEXTURE_SIZE_EXP=8TERRAIN_AUTOGEN_DENSITY=4TERRAIN_USE_GRADIENT_MAP=1TERRAIN_EXTENDED_TEXTURES=1TERRAIN_DEFAULT_RADIUS=9.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_RADIUS=9.000000TERRAIN_EXTENDED_LEVELS=4I also use a tiny swap file size for what it's worth, and have 2GB of ram. AGP aperture settings don't do much until I make the aperture really small, like 16mb, then AGP texture acceleration in DX9 is disabled. Anywhere from 64mb to 256mb seems to have no visible affect in any performance/IQ issues.Good luck,Noel

Personally, I am not having that much trouble with blurries. What I am getting at, if someone has 512MB RAM and the set their AGP aperture to 256, I'm not sure if they realize it but they are actually working with only 256MB RAM. Conversely, If someone has the blurries with a 128MB card, they can increase their RAM and AGP voltage top solve them. This is not necessarily for my benefit, it is to benefit those with blurry textures. After all, as I mentioned, Lacey pointed out that video memory starvation can cause blurries.So many people have stated that adding RAM beyond 1MB is completely useless. I am trying to point out that there may be a reason to add more RAM if you adjust your settings properly.

My understanding is that the AGP aperture allocates virtual memory (out of the 4 Gb address space) for use of the AGP card. Whether or not any of that virtual space is actually allocated physical memory is a function of the operating system. Since physical memory is allocate as 4 kb pages, there is a possibility of this AGP aperture memory being fragmented. The GART is used to provide address translation to make the AGP aperture appear to be contiguous in physical memory for speed.scott s..

"My understanding is that the AGP aperture allocates virtual memory (out of the 4 Gb address space) for use of the AGP card."Exactly: the AGP aperture refers to address space, not physical memory. AGP memory will only be used if it's needed, otherwise it's available for any other use.