Could someone give me the short course for setting the AGP Aperture in the BIOS?I've already done it but I want to know why I see a graphic performance increase.When I got my Dell 8300 it already came set-up. I had a 9800 pro 128MB video card, when I screwed it up. I went out and got the first AGP card I could find. It was a ATI 9550 256MB. I've had it for awhile and was following a thread about setting the memory in the BIOS to 256 for the AGP aperture setting because FSX needed it.My BIOS has 32,64,128 and 256 for the AGP Aperture settings. Mine was set to 128. I don't have FSX yet but I saw a boost in performance in FS9 to the point I've increased the quality settings on the card and have found a new smoothness.I am presuming that the AGP Aperture should match the memory on the card, is this correct?If I get a card with 512 MB would my BIOS recognize this and offer a 512 setting? or would I need a new mother board?Thanks

AGP aperture is set to 1/2 of system VRAMI set mine to 128 cause i have a 256 cardfor your reading pleasure:http://www.myplc.com/sony/agp_aperture.htmit really does not make too much diff

ThanksI noted that article was written in 2002. It seems they are talking about system RAM and not the amount of memory on the card.I have a gig of system RAM. Maybe back in 2002, 512 MB of system RAM was typical.Quote:"..The AGP Aperture is the amount of system RAM which the ATI Mobility M1 GPU can use for additional graphics texture memory."

Daryl; An oversimplified explanation of Aperture is....the amount of systemRAM mapped or reserved for video use. Its use is going to vary quite a bit depending on what application andhow much total system RAM you have. The trick in Fs9 was to try and "Force" the use of the Video card'sown memory by keeping this setting small thus not letting the videomemory offload to the slower system memory. If you're running more than64MB AGP Aperture for Fs9 you'll most likely see better performance ifyou lower it. Now In FSX I would suppose that larger Aperture settings may be necessary due to the fact that ACES has basicly told us that more ofthe sim has been offloaded to the videocard. Just some test figures I came up with for FS9; 1024MB total system RAM, 256MB video card. At the launch of FS9 around 800MB of system RAMwould be available. Using a 64MB AGP Aperture, the available system RAMfigure seldom showed less than 200-300MB. Using an AGP Aperture of 256MB on the same test flight would show 100MBor less system RAM available several times over the flight duration. Using the Memon utility In FSX it showed 904MB of system RAM beingused and 214 of my 256 video memory. That was with a 64MB Aperture. As soon as I get another Gig of RAM installed I'll try 256MB. I think you can see how the amount of system RAM can limit what youdo with the setting.

For some good explanations, try google and search "AGP Aperature". It seems that aperature setting performance will also be directly tied to available system memory.

Thanks Denny. They say the proof is in the pudding. I was trying to understand what I was seeing in the sim.When autostart gets finished I usually have around 750 MB of free memory. Using the rule of thumb, half of that would be over 256 MB, indicating that the aperture should be set to 256. I don't know if the memory on the video card was included or not in that 750 MB of free memory.It's hard to put into words what I'm seeing in the sim. That's why we usually resort to FPS as a measure of performance.Everything seems smoother, which means my eye isn't seeing the effects from texture loading. At low level I look out of the window to try and see any micro studders as the scenery passes and I see an improvement. When I used to pan in VC I would see a major pause as I passed 90 degrees in the pan until the textures reloaded. I would sometimes see white block artifacts at the edge of the pan where the textures haven't loaded. I don't see those anymore. I'm using one of the smaller (256x256 ?) 3D cloud texture sizes and they give no problem at all. I might even try the default cloud textures again.XP pro makes changing the aperture size easy, F2 key on boot-up and it's under memory.This little change makes FS9 flying fun for me and it's on my list of tweaks.

It worked for me also, Daryll. Your results are almost exactly what mine are. I have an Nvidia 6800GT with 256MB and 1 gig of system ram. I didn't pick up a lot of FPS, but definitely smoother and prettier. I would urge people to at least give it a try.