Resizable BAR (Smart Access Memory) Now Available on Nvidia RTX 3000 Series GPUs

[Random_Person1234]

Summary

Resizable BAR (Smart Access Memory) has been released on all RTX 3000 Ampere GPUs. Benchmarks released by Nvidia show about a 6-12% performance increase in select games. To enable, you must install driver version 465.89 and install the new VBIOS if you have a card that is not the RTX 3060. You must also make sure your CPU and motherboard are compatible, and if the motherboard is compatible, it has a BIOS that supports Resizable BAR.

 

Quotes

Quote

Spoiler

 

Quote

Spoiler

 

Quote

Spoiler

 

Quote

To successfully activate Resizable BAR on a desktop PC, please follow these steps in order, referring to the expanded installation instructions below:

1. Confirm you have a compatible CPU & CPU chipset (see list below)

2. Confirm you have a compatible motherboard (see list below)

3. Update your motherboard SBIOS, if required, by installing an update from the manufacturer. Then enable Resizable BAR support in your motherboard’s BIOS interface

4. Update to the latest GeForce Game Ready Driver (version 465.89 WHQL at the time of writing, released March 30th, 2021), or a later version

5. If you have a GeForce RTX 3060, you’re good to go. If you have a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti, 3070, 3080, or 3090, then you may require an updated VBIOS

6. If you have a Founders Edition graphics card from NVIDIA, get your VBIOS update tool directly from our website. If you have a custom partner card, get the update tool from their site (see list below)

7. Verify Resizable BAR is enabled in the NVIDIA Control Panel (see instructions below)

Quote

To update VBIOS:

 

• ASUS: Select GeForce RTX 30 Series --> Model --> Support --> Driver & Utility
• COLORFUL
• EVGA
• Gainward: Select GPU --> Tool
• Galax
• GIGABYTE
• INNO3D
• MSI: Select GPU --> Support --> Utility --> choose MSI Dragon Center or MSI Live Update
• Palit: Select GPU --> Tool 
• PNY
• Zotac

 

My thoughts

I'm glad to see Nvidia enable this feature, although I am disappointed that Zen 2 is not supported.

 

Sources

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support/

 

Edit: If you are having problems enabling Resizable BAR like @porina and I were having, try enabling 4G decoding.

[CTR640]

I almost read Smart Ass Memory, or I already did... RIP me.

[RejZoR]

It was said Palit is suppose to release the BIOS soon, but it's still not there. Hm. I want to try it. I have everything needed, just not the BIOS.

[Random_Person1234]

1 minute ago, RejZoR said:

It was said Palit is suppose to release the BIOS soon, but it's still not there. Hm. I want to try it. I have everything needed, just not the BIOS.

https://www.palit.com/palit/download.php?pc_cate=vga&pc=343&id=3739&lang=en

Is it the BIOS update utility under tool? Although it's from December.

[Moonzy]

19 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

install the new VBIOS

 

I'll let people do it first

1) to check if it bricks their cards

2) to see if there's mining limiter

 

Don't think zen 2 supports it yet anyways

[DildorTheDecent]

9 minutes ago, Moonzy said:

Don't think zen 2 supports it yet anyways

It does. BIOS updates for boards have been pushed out.

[Random_Person1234]

1 minute ago, DildorTheDecent said:

It does. BIOS updates for boards have been pushed out.

According to Nvidia, Resizable BAR is only available on Zen 3, Intel 10th Gen, and Intel 11th Gen.

[DildorTheDecent]

15 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

According to Nvidia, Resizable BAR is only available on Zen 3, Intel 10th Gen, and Intel 11th Gen.

Their implementation has likely locked out Zen 2. Being nvidia it doesn't surprise me at all. On the flip side some users claim it works though.

 

Zen 2 for sure does support Resizable-BAR though. The BIOS updates have been out for the past fortnight or so.

[Blai5e]

14 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

According to Nvidia, Resizable BAR is only available on Zen 3, Intel 10th Gen, and Intel 11th Gen.

Pssst - I've got it enabled on a 9th Gen 9900k with a Z370 motherboard & RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra (both EVGA).

[RejZoR]

Cool, Palit confirmed on Twitter that their cards are getting BIOS updates on 2021-03-31. Can't wait.

[StDragon]

No Zen 2 support and Turing doesn't exist. Thanks Nvidia 

[porina]

GPU: check

Mobo: check

CPU: check

Driver: check

VBIOS: nope. Guess I have to wait on MSI for this part.

Games: none that I play, so I wont be missing it anyway!

[Random_Person1234]

9 minutes ago, porina said:

VBIOS: nope. Guess I have to wait on MSI for this part.

That's strange. I can see an option to download it for my 3070 Ventus 3x OC through Dragon Center.

[porina]

52 minutes ago, Random_Person1234 said:

That's strange. I can see an option to download it for my 3070 Ventus 3x OC through Dragon Center.

I have the 3070 Trio X. Tried the liveupdate utility which returned nothing. Following your reply I replaced it with Dragon Center, and a normal scan on that also found nothing. It did offer an update after doing an Advanced Scan. I said yes to everything and... still not working. The BIOS version reported by GPU-Z is unchanged between the two versions, but the MSI reported version went from 146 to 147. I checked mobo bios says it supports re-bar and I didn't see any manual option in it to turn it on or off. Driver is latest one released today. At that point, I'm going back to gaming and might look at this again another time.

 

Edit: I did a quick search and it turns out for my mobo bios you have to first turn on above 4G decoding for the re-bar setting to be shown. Then switch it over from disabled to auto. Reboot, and now the driver reports it is working. Hope that helps in case anyone else runs into the same.

[Delicieuxz]

I think (according to benchmarks I saw) the performance difference between an RTX 3080 and a 3090 was around 8% average.

 

According to Nvidia's resizable BAR benchmark graph, the RTX 3080 gets an average performance increase of 8.72% across the benchmarked games. That means that, across the benchmarked games, an RTX 3080 is now basically as powerful as an RTX 3090 was before this update.

 

An $850+ GPU just got the performance of a $1700+ GPU, in some games.

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Blai5e said:

Pssst - I've got it enabled on a 9th Gen 9900k with a Z370 motherboard & RTX 3090 FTW3 Ultra (both EVGA).

And your experience was? 

[Random_Person1234]

3 hours ago, porina said:

I have the 3070 Trio X. Tried the liveupdate utility which returned nothing. Following your reply I replaced it with Dragon Center, and a normal scan on that also found nothing. It did offer an update after doing an Advanced Scan. I said yes to everything and... still not working. The BIOS version reported by GPU-Z is unchanged between the two versions, but the MSI reported version went from 146 to 147. I checked mobo bios says it supports re-bar and I didn't see any manual option in it to turn it on or off. Driver is latest one released today. At that point, I'm going back to gaming and might look at this again another time.

 

Edit: I did a quick search and it turns out for my mobo bios you have to first turn on above 4G decoding for the re-bar setting to be shown. Then switch it over from disabled to auto. Reboot, and now the driver reports it is working. Hope that helps in case anyone else runs into the same.

Thank you!

I was having the same problems as you, but then saw that 4G decoding was off. I turned it on, and Resizable BAR is now working on my system. I also did a Google search and saw that you may want to disable CSM, which I did.

[Morgan MLGman]

4 hours ago, porina said:

GPU: check

Mobo: check

CPU: check

Driver: check

VBIOS: nope. Guess I have to wait on MSI for this part.

Games: none that I play, so I wont be missing it anyway!

The only game in which I noticed a substantial difference was Assassin's Creed Valhalla - enabling SAM on my RX 6900 XT added around 15 FPS, going from 100 FPS to 115 FPS maxed out at 1440p.

Besides that nothing noticeable. I'm going to test if SAM works on PCIE 3.0 on AMD soon, to see if it's possible to use it with a gen 3 vertical GPU mount that I have. I know it should work on Nvidia with gen 3.

[RejZoR]

As promised, Palit uploaded their BIOS today in the morning CET time. Installed and now I'm gonna play some Borderlands 3 that I was playing already. Lets see if I'll notice any difference.

[ne0tic]

This is great although I can't find what VBIOS my GPU is running so I'm not sure if I'm supposed to download F3 or F11... It says that you are only able to update to a VBIOS within the range F1-F9 or F10-F19 so depending on what VBIOS you have got, you need to download the right series of new VBIOS. Guess I will not be able to use SAM then, because I don't want to guess my VBIOS and potentially brick the card. 

[YubinTheBunny]

Looks like the asus vbios update tool is borked, at least for me. Keeps saying the vbios is up to date when it's clearly not. Could just be me having this problem though.

 

Edit: Apparently you need Asus GPU Tweak installed in order to update... They might want to add that to their documentation.

[porina]

9 hours ago, Random_Person1234 said:

I was having the same problems as you, but then saw that 4G decoding was off. I turned it on, and Resizable BAR is now working on my system. I also did a Google search and saw that you may want to disable CSM, which I did.

In my case it was already disabled so no change was needed. 

 

9 hours ago, Morgan MLGman said:

Besides that nothing noticeable. I'm going to test if SAM works on PCIE 3.0 on AMD soon, to see if it's possible to use it with a gen 3 vertical GPU mount that I have. I know it should work on Nvidia with gen 3.

Since I'm on Comet Lake, I'm running 3.0 with nv. Still debating getting a Rocket Lake once I sort some other things out.

[Robioto]

 

Is the "Yes" here 100% confirmation that I've set it up correctly?

 

Thanks.

[RejZoR]

I'm confused. Borderlands 3 runs like dog shit now. Intro videos/cutscenes are getting stuck more for some reason, entering maps now visibly loads washed out textures and replaces them with ultra ones which wasn't happening before, there are constant literal frame pauses when entering new areas that I haven't experienced for years of being on high end components. What the hell? Usually there is placebo perception things are running better, but here it's visibly worse and I have no clue how or why.

[Morgan MLGman]

1 hour ago, Robioto said:

Is the "Yes" here 100% confirmation that I've set it up correctly?

 

Thanks.

Probably yes, but to be 100% sure I'd recommend you verify it using this short instruction:
"Go into device manager (run > devmgmt.msc), find your GPU under display adapters > Resources > Large Memory Range (something close to this effect) should be present. If it is, resize bar is operational."