Observations on 128MB video card

[Vulcan 14]

>...trying 256 is also what is recommended by Nvidia in thier GF3 FAQ,

[Guest cornclose]

What, are you trying to say that AGP texturing is the be-all and end-all for performance ? Nope. I don't think so. Why are we seeing vid cards with all this extra memory then ? If AGP was all it was cracked up to be, why bother with any local video memory. After all, we'd only need a tad less than 22mb for 1600x1200x32 with three frame buffers.Its been well debated in the past (and probably still is, hell, here we are again) that AGP was not necessarily the way to. Marketing hype from Intel again. x(Lets drop all the 128mb cards, and the 64mb ones, and for that matter, the 32mb ones aswell while we're at it, and rely on the good 'old' AGP bus to bring everything grinding to a halt. :-lolThere is proof everywhere if you were to look, that the same systems, one with a 64mb card, one with a 128mb card, with everything else being equal, that in a texture intensive application ('erm, like FS2002) the 128mb card will produce better results. Fact. :(Store all your textures to draw the frame(s) in local video memory and things will be a lot happier. Use AGP bus, things won't be quite so good.Avoid AGP texturing = Better PerformanceLets have that in my signature...Chris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

[Guest cornclose]

What the AGP aperture does is sets the MAXIMUM amount of system ram for use as AGP texture memory. Setting this to 128mb on a 256mb system is potentially throttling it :-hang but I doubt it would get this out of hand with FS2002.Chris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

[Guest]

Its good to hear your success with the GF3 Ti200 Damian. Let me recommend that others reading this however wait a few days and check out the performance of the GF4 Ti4200. This card should be extremely inexpensive relatively speaking ($150-$180 range), yet it blows performance out of the water compared to even the highest end GF3 Ti500.This may not make much of a difference for Flight Simulator specifically as almost any current generation GF3 or GF4 will run FS quite well if the CPU is powerful enough, but as we've found out before most of us don't just run FS. With the GF4 Ti4200, almost any other game out there will run so much better compared to any GF3. And FS most certainly can benefit as well at the highest resolutions and AA settings.Just about every single card maker out there will release their Ti4200 based cards within the next week. They are quite the steal.Take care, http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest]

A GF4 for only $180? *sigh* If only we were so lucky in the UK. Long live inflated prices for hardware, eh!?Always good to hear from you in any thread, Elrond.Cheers

[Guest PaulL01]

>>...trying 256 is also what is recommended by Nvidia in thier GF3 FAQ,<>>Paul, >>I'm surprised at this size AGP and your setting of 128MB >with 256MB total RAM. >>My understanding is that the AGP apature is an amount of RAM >set aside for the graphics card; therefore if you have 256MB >RAM and set the AGP port to 128 surely you only have 128MB >of main RAM left to run the rest of FS. >>Or am I missing something here? >>Rgds Spock? is that U? Sorry :)Yeah, the AGP aperture setting does not work that way, it doesn't set memory "aside" as we may think.The AGP bus will only use system RAM when it needs to, that is when an application needs to store textures that do not fit on the video adapters memory, So instead of needing to keep reading the hardrive for testures This highly improves performance, since it does not have to load the textures each time they are needed. Instead, they are stored already in system memory which makes it much faster to display them.Some older hardware and even some current harware combos do not implement AGP very well and need to have a small AGP aperture size (32) to clear up stuttering and other problems.Here is a direct quote from Nvidias GF3 FAQ:--------------------------------------------------------------------"It should be set to half your system RAM if possible, and if not it should be set at some point below or equal to the amount of RAM that you have. However, it is possible to experience speed advantages of 2-3 fps from setting the AGP Aperture size to 256 regardless of the amount of RAM that you have, and there are some games that may have visual problems fixed by setting the AGP Aperture size to 256.Beware that setting the AGP Aperture size too low (below 32) will actually disable AGP which will cause a speed decrease, although stability problems may be solved - see the 'My GeForce keeps on locking up. How can I fix it?' question for more information.There are also some programs that have problems (stuttering for example) when the aperture size is set too high. Experiment and see which setting is best for your system and programs.It's possible that if you set your AGP Aperture size to 256 you will be able to load the 64MB texture test in 3DMark2000.You can only change this in your BIOS setup - it may be called something slightly different, so look for a setting that is measured in MB and can be set to values such as 16, 32, 64, 128 and 256. Different motherboards allow different settings: my motherboard for example only allows me to set it to 64 or 256."----------------------------------------------------------------------I hope this clears things up for you.Paul

[Guest PaulL01]

Just to make this clear, I never said a smaller AGP is "not good or better" on >your< machine or ones like yours, as it is an old fact that some machines just cant run very well on an AGP bigger than 32mb some cant even run at all with certain combos of old hardware. The advice I passed on is industry standard advice that can be backed up by documented Fact, Benchmarks as well as the market and it works and is used daily.>What, are you trying to say that AGP texturing is the be-all >and end-all for performance ? The better question is why are all BIOS updates still allowing it? Or why do graphic card manufacturers recommend it? To make their cards run slower?>Nope. I don't think so. Why >are we seeing vid cards with all this extra memory then ? Because that

[Vulcan 14]

>Spock? is that U?

[Guest]

Hey Damian,Ah yes... You and me both brother, you and me both. Here in Canada that $150-$180 is really $231-$278 (at todays rates - who knows tomorrow :-(). And of course, if buying locally, lets not forget the 15% tax on top of that ($266-$320). If buying over the net still within Canada but out of province, 8% of that is dropped, but theres still 7% tax added ($248-$298). If buying in the states online and cross-boarder shipping, well the full 15% is back (plus the dreadful exchange rate). Yippie! If you're not a hardware dealer in Canada you always get the short end of the stick compared to Americans who can be only five miles across the boarder! (unless you are a native Indian - then theres a full tax exempt status! :-mad).Good to see you too Damian. I'm happy to hear of your satisfaction with your system - there's nothing better than that in our hobby.Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif

[Guest PaulL01]

>What the AGP aperture does is sets the MAXIMUM amount of >system ram for use as AGP texture memory. Setting this to >128mb on a 256mb system is potentially throttling it :-hang >but I doubt it would get this out of hand with FS2002. >>Chris E >http://website.lineone.net/~flightsimuk >Avoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)You have no clue budeeee!

[Guest]

Interesting reading. I have a wierd problem one of you may be able to help me with. I have the system speced below, but can't get the AGP x4 to work. I have Nvmax set to 4, the Bios is set to 4, but Wcpuid still reports AGP x2. Any ideas? Does it really matter?Thanks.

[Guest]

Thanks for heads up on the cheaper 128MB ti 4200 GF4's coming next week, I been waiting... Ti4600 cost too much for an older system like mine and 128MB GF3's cost about like a GF4 ti4200. == WHK ==

[Guest cornclose]

>>Hey Guys, I didn't intend my question to start a war:-eek No War, just a difference of opinion, which is fine.Those of you who wish to wallow in relatively poor performance by using video cards with too little local memory and turning sliders upto max than carry right on... (and this is not directed at you Vulcan)...Paul01 doesn't seem to have read a word that I have said. Anyone else confused, then read my posts again and ignore his. :-lolChris Ehttp://website.lineone.net/~flightsimukAvoid AGP texturing = Better Performance ;)

[Guest cornclose]

>> I never said a smaller AGP is "not good or better" on >your< machine or ones like yoursPaul, neither did I...>> as it is an old fact that some machines just cant run very well on an AGP bigger than 32mb some cant even run at all with certain combos of old hardware.Agreed...>> The advice I passed on is industry standard advice that can be backed up by documented Fact, Benchmarks as well as the market and it works and is used daily.Agreed...>> The better question is why are all BIOS updates still allowing it? Or why do graphic card manufacturers recommend it? To make their cards run slower?No, its a feature which has graudully been developed to allow texture rich apps (obviously not just flight sims) to run >acceptably< when the vid card cannot store all textures locally.>> Because that

[Guest]

Hi Jerry,That is unusual. I couldn't begin to diagnose that problem without seeing the hardware unfortunately.The good news is there is extremely little difference between AGP 2x and 4x speed-wise. As a matter of fact, running a card at 2x AGP is sometimes a good way to cure very sporadic and hard to find crashing problems. I recommend this as a cure for those that have tried just about every thing else they can to fix their crash problems and it usually works perfectly. So, in your case crashing may not have been a problem, but keeping your card at 2x AGP is not harmful to your card's speed in the least. You may loose 100-200 points in 3DMark or 2-5 FPS in Quake III benchmarks, but you'd never be able to feel the difference in real game play. This is specially true in games like FS and most sims where they are so CPU bound.Sorry I couldn't help further...Take care,http://members.rogers.com/eelvish/elrondlogo.gifhttp://members.rogers.com/eelvish/flyurl.gif