Those who were able to get one of Nvidia’s new ones RTX 3060 graphics cards yesterday now have access to the lwaited a long time Customizable BAR support, that is the feature that PC users can enable at the BIOS level to make the CPU and GPU talk directly to each other. This is a big deal because that’s right away helps increase game frame rates.
Support for this feature was rolled out yesterday with the latest driver update from Nvidia, but only affects the RTX 3060 currently. Nvidia said Customizable BAR support for the rest of the 30 Series crew will follow in late March.
But like AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM), that’s just another way of saying Resizable BAR, compatibility is limited to specific CPUs and motherboards. Not anyone with a RTX 3060 will cannot activate the function yet.
Currently, Nvidia’s Resizable BAR is only compatible with AMD 500 series chipsets and AMD 400 series chipsets on motherboards with AMD Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 series CPU support. In addition, you need an AMD Ryzen 5000 series processor to use Resizable BAR with an Nvidia graphics card. It is currently not compatible with older AMD processors.
On the Intel side, compatibility includes 400 series chipsets, as well as all 11th generation chipsets available from February 25th.But because Nvidia has worked closely with Intel to With this underway, it seems likely that Resizable BAR will be ready for use when Intel releases its 11th generation desktop CPUs and next generation chipsets; Nvidia lists 11th generation Core i9, i7 and i5 as compatible, as well as Core i9, i7, i5 and i3 10th generation CPUs.
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Resizable BAR is also compatible with motherboards from all major manufacturerss, including Asus, ASRock, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI. Nvidia didn’t say which one specifically, but each manufacturer would have more information on their websites. Since 400 series chipsets are compatible, all 400 series motherboards should also be compatible (Z490, H470, B460 and H410), but any manufacturer could decide to enable this only on certain models. Always the best to check!
I wouldn’t hold your breath Customizable BAR to come soon also to 300 series Intel chipsets. That chipset, which supports 8th and 9th generation CPUs, will reach its end of life in January 2022, so it’s likely Intel won’t be focusing on compatibility for that generation.
RTX 30 series gaming laptops also support a customizable bar with Intel and AMD processors. Again, you will need to contact the laptop manufacturer to see if it is supported on a particular model. The MSI GP66 Leopardsupports it, for example.
But even if your PC ticks all those boxes, you won’t see a boost in frame rate in every game, as is the case with AMD’s SAM. At the moment, there are only a handful of games that support Resizable BAR with an Nvidia GPU, including Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Borderlands 3 Metro Exodus, and several others
As always, don’t forget to update your drivers, BIOS and VBIOS so that this new feature actually works on your supported PC.