Graphic Aperture

[Metr01973]

Hi, I was wondering what the optimum settings would be for the graphics aperture in the bios. I have heard that it should be set to half of what your graphic card ram is but I can't remember. I have a 256mb graphic card so should it be set at 128mb because at the moment it's set at 256mb. Also what does the graphic aperature do? will I notice a difference? My computer is still having very random crashes and I was wondering if the graphic aperture is set too high.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Also can I change a hardrive in a laptop?
http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/laptops/sony-vaio-pcg-r600hfpd/
It's not a very good picture but it's the only one I can find. All there is on the bottom is a load of screws but I have tried undoing them and all thet happened was that I was able to remove the keyboard. Any help would be apprecaited.

 

[lintphishx]

In a nutshell, It uses your system ram for graphics memory. For example, I installed about 512mb of ram in my wifes computer. There wasn't a big difference in her favorite game, the Sims 2, but I changed The aperture from 64MB to 256MB and the load times droped significantly. The thing is that any applications using the agp video memory is also using that 256MB of my system memory, so it swaps to the page file a bit more making multitasking quite a bit slower.

About the random crashes, I can't really say. But if you have anything overclocked run it at stock and see if you have the same problems. I've been able to run a 2.4ghz system at 2.9ghz with the ram overclocked as well and most games work great, save Second Life. That game always crashed it until I took the ram speed down.

 

[Metr01973]

Thanks for the reply. My graphics aperture was set at 256mb but I've dropped it 128mb to see if I have any more random crashes, as the crashes all seem to be when I'm playing games especially Splinter Cell 1&2. The only thing I've got overclocked is the graphics card but I've only just OC it again after dropping it back to stock. I wanted to see if the OC on the graphic card had anything to do with the crashes but alas it didn't, my machine still crashes wether the graphic card/processor is OC or not. So far with the graphic aperture at 128mb I haven't had a crash(YET)LOL. Don't ya just love computers.

 

[lintphishx]

I've heard people having problems at 256mb. It may depend more on the card... or the drivers... or the cards memory. Like you said yourself, computers are pretty picky. It's like they have minds of their own. In short, I don't think it's odd that you have problems at 256mb. The difference in performance usually isn't that great unless every little bit make an impression on you.

 

[Metr01973]

I've dropped it down to 128mb but NFSMW crashed to the desktop, so I'm stumped now. It dosen't really bother me that much cause it's not happening all the time. I guess sometime in the future I will probably solve it but until then I'll have to live with it. Thanks for the responses.