Nvidia has started rolling out support for Resizable BAR, a feature of PCI Express that can increase frame rates in select games by up to 10 percent. The new RTX 3060 graphics card is the first with Resizable BAR, which allows certain CPUs to access the full graphics frame buffer, rather than being limited to reading only 256MB blocks. Support for other 30 Series GPUs will be available in late March.
You need the right CPU, motherboard, and graphics card to use this new feature, and Nvidia has partnered with both AMD and Intel to provide chipset support. AMD’s Zen 3 CPUs are supported, along with Intel’s 10th Gen processors and the company’s upcoming 11th Gen S chips.
Like AMD’s Smart Access Memory, Resizable BAR on Nvidia GPUs can increase frame rates in select games by up to 10 percent. The boost is really game dependent, and the resolution can also affect how much performance will increase. “During our testing, we found that some titles benefit from a few percent, up to 10 percent,” says Nvidia. “However, there are also titles whose performance is declining.”
Nvidia pre-tests titles and uses special game profiles to enable Resizable BAR only when performance increases. The following games are currently supported:
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Battlefield V.
- Borderlands 3
- Forza Horizon 4
- Gears 5
- Metro Exodus
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Watch Dogs: Legion
Additional games will be supported in late March, when Nvidia releases VIOS updates for the rest of its 30-series GPUs. Nvidia will provide VBIOS updates for all Founders Edition 30 Series cards, and board partners will also release their own updates. You’ll also need a motherboard update that includes the necessary CPU support, and Nvidia says Asus, Asrock, Colorful, Evga, Gigabyte, and MSI have all started supporting Resizable BAR on select motherboards.
Customizable BAR support on the AMD side has been widely tested, and TechSpot found that some games using Smart Access Memory could see a boost of nearly 20 percent at 1440p and 4K.