RAM!!!! some questions

Posted by Peat 
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RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 01:02PM
Posted by: Peat
Yo fellas,

just got me a gig of ram, havent put it in yet, will save that for when i get home.

at the mo i have 512mb and it does ok, but im having some trouble with rfactor (get bad stuttering in PCC Mod) I was told that incresing my ram and setting my agp aperture higher will cure this.

What else will it do? Could i run more cars on the screen etc? or is that totally down to my gfx card?


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 01:18PM
Posted by: gav
Graphics card.

Setting your aperture higher is vague at best.

A copy/paste from a post on V12 I made last week:

Quote

It's the ammount of system memory that can be used along with the graphics cards own memory for storing textures. Don't confuse it with the memory (generally crappy) onboard graphics chips on motherboards thieve from your system. AGP aperture takes the RAM as and if necessary, and uses it differently.

Basically, if you use games with huge textures (as rFactor can do), then you might get a bit of a boost by having this set to a higher than average setting (go for 256mb max), but if you're still playing games of a few years old and/or you've got a small ammount of system RAM (say 512mb or under for gaming), then you'll probably want to limit this setting to 64mb or 128mb, or your system will start using the hard drive for 'swapping' (creating virtual RAM on the hard drive), and that kills performance like nothing else.

So basically, you won't get much boost from it at all, and setting it too high will completely negate you buying more RAM.

If you've an ATI card, that will be the thing causing the stuttering, not the RAM.
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 01:20PM
Posted by: Peat
oh


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 01:24PM
Posted by: Vader
RAM bam thank you ma'am.





REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 01:29PM
Posted by: -qwerty-
Ahar har! :/ ;)


Apperture is an oddthing, as far as I've ever been asble to tell its a legacy setting that just got left in, and it doesnt seem to make any difference to new game performance. Some will say set to half gfx memory, others say half system memory. Mneh, I'd leave it be.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 09:01PM
Posted by: Peat
ok, how would one go about changing it?

ive had a root around the bios and i cant find anything close to what im looking for.


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 09:51PM
Posted by: gav
-qwerty- Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ahar har! :/
>
>
> Apperture is an oddthing, as far as I've ever
> been asble to tell its a legacy setting that just
> got left in, and it doesnt seem to make any
> difference to new game performance. Some will say
> set to half gfx memory, others say half system
> memory. Mneh, I'd leave it be.

It's system RAM, it depends on the type of games you generally play, and how they work with textures, and it even with 2gb of RAM, I won't set it above 256mb.

Peat, if it's not in the BIOS, you can't change it. Which motherboard?
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 10:16PM
Posted by: turkey_machine
AGP aperture tells the graphics card to use XX MB system RAM, as set in the BIOS, when the graphics card RAM runs out. Much like virtual memory, only for the graphics card, and it uses RAM instead of the hard disk.


Everyone knows that million-to-one chances happen 9 times out of 10; indeed, it's a common requirement in fairy tales. If the human didn't have to overcome huge odds, what would be the point? Terry Pratchett - The Science Of Discworld

GPGSL S5 Race driver for IED.

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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 17, 2006 10:45PM
Posted by: Peat
got an asus A7N8X - LA

dunno if there is a new bios version i can downlaod for it? it seems quite complicated to upgrade bios.


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 12:46AM
Posted by: NickKK
I really wouldn't try unless it's a last resort and you really really think it needs to be done..


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 02:30AM
Posted by: danm
updating bios you just put it on a floppy and boot up the machine, the floppy does the work.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 04:24AM
Posted by: Ferrari_Fuhrer
Yes, but if it balls's up, you can have problems ;-)

[Website]
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 09:27AM
Posted by: Peat
yeah, thats what im afriad of.

the reason im desperate to do it is that when playing the pcc mod on rfactor, i get really bad stuttering and my HD light is flashing like crazy.

What i think is happening is the game is overflowing its alotted 64mb of system ram and using the swap space on my HD rather than using the 1 gig of free ram.

does that sound about wright?


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 09:55AM
Posted by: -qwerty-
No, not really.

I don't know rfactor, but I've never known a game to run anything noticeably different using different AGP apperture settings.

If the hard drive is being accessed a lot, maybe you need more ram? How much do you have?

If you're still worried about the AGP apperture, turn down the resolution or texture detail in rfactor, as this (depending on gfx engine) forces smaller sized (in mb) textures, so not using s much gfx memory. Then again lower res / textures will reduce the overall load on the system so will probably solve it anyway.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 10:19AM
Posted by: Peat
well, i had 512mb but just yesturday got another gig.

i have the low res textures already so its rather annoying.


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 11:07AM
Posted by: Peat
ok, is 'press F1 for SETUP' different from the bios?

thats all i was doing last night. do i have to hold down delete instead? is it standard accross all PC's?


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 11:24AM
Posted by: -qwerty-
Setup is the bios, yeah.

It'll be under "Chipset" or Plug and Play devices I expect.

But honestly mate, I REALLY don't think its an agp apperture issue, at all.

-----------------

She says brief things, her love’s a pony
My love’s subliminal
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 11:33AM
Posted by: gav
It's not.

The AGP Aperture is a tinkering measure. It doesn't solve major performance issues. You're not suddenly going to gain 20fps from changing it.

It's certainly RAM, plus some later ATi drivers have issues with rF. Apparently uninstalling your currents ones, and installing Catalyst 5.6 solves that.
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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 11:36AM
Posted by: Peat
yeah, running the 5.6 cat


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Re: RAM!!!! some questions
Date: January 18, 2006 11:40AM
Posted by: Ferrari_Fuhrer
The only thing I ever found AGP Aperture settings good for was PCs unbootable when I was still at school. The PCs has 128Mb of memory, so I set the aperture size to 256Mb, and they all froze on startup.

The technicians couldn't work out what was happening ;)

[Website]
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