Your question provokes a rather complicated answer, because so many factors can affect the appearance of the video display in specific usage situation. None of the specific answers is the "magic bullet" and your efforts will be best managed through trial and error. Even then the "gains" may be minor and your mileage may vary.
There are, of course, "general/global" considerations, but the result of such changes may or may not result in improvement.
1. Most video card come with the best basic drivers that were available at time of sale. And "upgrades" of the video drivers can greatly improve performance…….. or not. So you'll have to experiment.
2. Changing "resolution", for example from 1280x1024 down to 1024 x 768 "may" improve performance but have an undesired affect of losing sharpness of image.
3. In the actual "game setup", Anti-Aliasing is often defaulted at 6x, but can be reduced to 4x, 2x and even "off" to improve performance, but with the undesireable effect of possibly causing "jagged" images.
4. Other applications and processes running in the background comsume resources, turn them off.
5. Up grading to a large amount of physical RAM will likely improve the overall performance of your machine, but "probably" not your gaming video display, since the apeture continues to call for only the same amount of memory.
6. A caveate to #5 is that if you physically install more RAM "prior to" upgrading your machine's BIOS, then the BIOS will "read" your machines physical resources and "set" a larger number, probably based on the general rule of 1/2 of available resources. **Caution: Flashing the BIOS, while sometimes useful, can also be hazardous and can reduce your machine to a very expensive door stop, if done incorrectly. Contrary to popular "lore and rumor" it is possible to recover from a bad BIOS Flash, but you'd need to study up on it.
7. Perhaps the most "promising" route to take could be use of various "software" tweaks that trick Windows into allocating resources differently than those set in BIOS. Proceed at your own risk. I've not used any of these software utilities, nor can I vouch for the authors or their results. And even then your mileage may vary.
Yes, Sony is rather restrictive in this aspect of allowing changes.
Some useful resources, or at least interesting reading can be found in various "threads" posted around the Net where folks have faced and resolved similar situations.
Software tweaks to change Apeture (I'm not vouching for the safety/effectiveness of this approach)
http://www.myplc.com/sony/agp_aperture.htm
Changing "game settings", display settings, and background considerations:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t-1…P-aperture.html
or do more research by "googling" for "change the AGP Aperture"
It sometimes comes as an unexpected/unwanted blow, that a person spends alot of money on a new Video Card, only to find that the gains are barely noticeable or even non-existant.
I would appreciate hearing about your progress.
I probably have nothing else to offer, and I acknowledge that I may not have offered anything that you don't already know.
Still, posting your progress and results back here into this TC thread may very well assist others who are facing similar situations.
Best Regards
