NVIDIA RTX-30 series cards get a frame rate boost with Resizable BAR

NVIDIA announced today that it's rolling out a new feature called Resizable BAR to some RTX 30-series machines. This new feature could boost performance in some games, resulting in as much as a 10% boost to frame rates in those titles. For now, Resizable BAR is only available through the RTX 3060 on desktop and on RTX 30-series laptops, but NVIDIA says it will come to the whole RTX 30-series family next month.

So, what does Resizable BAR do? In a post to the GeForce website today, NVIDIA explains that Resizable BAR "is an optional PCI Express interface technology. As you move through a world in a game, GPU memory (VRAM) constantly transfers textures, shaders and geometry via many small CPU to GPU transfers." As games continue to grow in size, the number of transfers the CPU and GPU have to make grow as well.

"Using Resizable BAR, assets can instead be requested as-needed and sent in full, so the CPU can efficiently access the entire frame buffer," NVIDIA continues. "And if multiple requests are made, transfers can occur concurrently, rather than queuing." NVIDIA actually notes that while this can translate to as much as 10% boost to frame rate in some games, there are other titles that actually experience a drop in performance. The good news is that NVIDIA is testing titles ahead of time, and will only turn on Resizable BAR support in games where it serves up a performance increase.

The first of batch of games getting NVIDIA's Resizable BAR support include Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Battlefield V, Borderlands 3, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion. Resizable BAR support for all of those titles is shipping in the GeForce Game Ready Driver that was released yesterday, February 25th.

Of course, since Resizable BAR is a PCI Express technology that deals with both the GPU and CPU, you need more than just a compatible GPU and the latest Game Ready Driver to get it up and running – you also need a compatible chipset, CPU, and motherboard. As far as the RTX 30-series laptops are concerned, NVIDIA prompts users to check with their computer manufacturer to see if their machine is capable.

When it comes to desktops, there's a fairly decent range of CPU and motherboards that Resizable BAR is compatible with. A full list (along with instructions on how to get Resizable BAR up and running) can be found at the GeForce website link above, but 10th gen Intel Core i3, i5, i7, and i9 CPUs support it; as do 11th-gen i5, i7, and i9 CPUs. A number of AMD Zen 3 CPUs support the technology as well, and there are a bunch of motherboard manufacturers supporting Resizable BAR through SBIOS updates including ASUS, ASRock, Colorful, EVGA, Gigabyte, and MSI. We'll let you know when Resizable BAR comes to other RTX 30-series desktop cards, which should be happening in late March.