Graphics win size?

[fimbles]

Just been having a look in my bios. I noticed 2 intresting sounding settings and wondered exactly what they did.

A: graphics win size, Options for 2 mb, 4mb, 128mb, 256 mb.

And.......

B: Vga boot from. Options , auto, external agp, external pci.


I have a 256 mb AGP graphics card, how should i set these?

 

[AlbertLionheart]

OK
A: this sets the amount of memory you allocate to video from the on board RAM. As you have not posted your system spec (please do it now!) and you have an AGP graphics card it is not important.
B: VGA boot - not critical but set it to auto and the let the system get on with it. You could try the external AGP and test if you get a marginally faster boot from it. It will be milliseconds different!

 

[fimbles]

Ill post them now

Thanks for the speedy reply by the way

 

[sghiznaneck]

System graphics RAM in the bios settings should be 1/2 of the total aperature size of the onboard RAM of the card. If the graphics card you are running is 256 megs of RAM, the bios setting should be equal to 1/2 that, or 128 megs.

 

[AlbertLionheart]

Thats interesting - how does the graphics RAM on an inactive on-board graphics chip effect the performance of the fitted AGP card? Is this a cunning tweak?

 

[Fragrant Coit]

It's "shared" memory, it allocates how much the card can "borrow" from your RAM.

If you set it to 256Mb for example, it will use up to 256Mb if required, but won't automatically use 256Mb.

128Mb should be fine.

 

[fimbles]

Ty all very much. 128 mb it is I tryed to read up on this subject before posting and found lots of intresting yet conflicting stuff on the net. Ive tryed setting it to the lowest amount (4mb) and the highest amount (256mb) and ran the video stress test on css 3 times in a row on each setting. Surprisingly i get on average a 10 fps increase on the 4mb setting. but it was originally set on 128, so thats where ill put it. ty