Nvidia recently added Resizable BAR support to their RTX 30-Series graphics cards. It promises to boost gaming performance on both desktops and laptops, and could come with some other benefits, too.
However, most people have never heard of a Resizable BAR, so read on to find out about the Nvidia Resizable BAR, its benefits, and how to enable it to get 10-20 percent better gaming performance.
What Is Nvidia Resizable BAR?
Like AMD’s Smart Access Memory, Nvidia’s Resizable BAR allows the processor and the graphics card to share access to textures, shaders, and geometry for faster data transfers.
Modern games keep growing in size, resulting in a lot of data transfers and requests. Nvidia’s Resizable BAR comes in handy to regulate this process so that assets are requested as-needed and sent in full, allowing the CPU to access the entire frame buffer efficiently.
Resizable BAR works with Nvidia GPUs and processors from both Intel and AMD. Nvidia’s Resizable BAR is compatible with Intel 10th and 11th Gen chips and AMD’s Zen 3 processors.
Furthermore, along with a compatible processor, Nvidia Resizable BAR will also require a compatible motherboard to use this feature to boost your gaming performance.
How Does Nvidia Resizable BAR Work?
Before the launch of Nvidia’s Resizable BAR, your CPU could only access a small portion of your graphics memory, about 256MB, or the max capacity allowed with 32-bit systems.
Every time your CPU communicates with your GPU to access data, the commands are saved on this 256MB portion of your graphics card’s VRAM, leading to a bottleneck as the commands must be queued in a sequence.
Nvidia’s Resizable BAR aims to address this issue by allowing the processor to negotiate the BAR size on the GPU, giving the CPU complete access to the VRAM on a processor. This allows your processor to send multiple instructions to the GPU in parallel, speeding things up and increasing the performance as a result.
Motherboard Manufacturers Supporting Resizable BAR
As of April 3rd, 2021, these are the motherboard manufacturers that support Nvidia’s Resizable BAR functionality.
- ASUS
- ASRock
- COLORFUL
- EVGA
- GIGABYTE
- MSI
Head over to your motherboard’s manufacturer’s website to see if your motherboard supports Nvidia’s Resizable BAR or not.
Resizable BAR Compatible Motherboards
Here are some compatible motherboard models that support Nvidia Resizable BAR.
- Intel Z490
- Intel H410
- Intel H470
- Intel B460
- AMD 400 Series
- AMD 500 Series
- Other motherboards that support Intel’s 11th Gen CPUs
Resizable BAR Compatible Processors
Here are some compatible processor models that support Nvidia Resizable BAR.
- Intel Core i3 10xxx
- Intel Core i5 10xxx
- Intel Core i5 11xxx
- Intel Core i7 10xxx
- Intel Core i7 11xxx
- Intel Core i9 10xxx
- Intel Core i9 11xxx
- AMD Ryzen 3 5xxx
- AMD Ryzen 5 5xxx
- AMD Ryzen 7 5xxx
- AMD Ryzen 9 5xxx
Nvidia Resizable BAR Supported Games
As of April 3, 2021, these are the seventeen games that support Nvidia Resizable BAR.
- Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
- Battlefield V
- Borderlands 3
- Control
- Cyberpunk 2077
- Death Stranding
- DIRT 5
- F1 2020
- Forza Horizon 4
- Gears 5
- Godfall
- Hitman 2
- Hitman 3
- Horizon Zero Dawn
- Metro Exodus
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Watch Dogs Legion
Is Resizable BAR Exclusive to Nvidia Hardware?
Unlike its rival AMD, Nvidia does not make its own x86 processors, which means they’ll have to allow this feature to work with AMD and Intel’s processors.
AMD, on the other hand, doesn’t need Nvidia. They produce their own CPUs and GPUs that work with each other using their version of the Resizable BAR, called “Smart Access Memory,” which they had already launched before Nvidia’s Resizable BAR.
However, AMD said that it wasn’t a proprietary technology exclusive to their own hardware.
We welcome the opportunity to support other hardware vendors in their efforts as part of our ongoing commitment to using common and open standards to improve gaming experiences.
How to Enable Nvidia Resizable BAR?
Check out the following video for a step by step to enable Nvidia Resizable BAR and increase gaming performance:
You’ve Improved Your Gaming Performance!
Now you know what’s Nvidia’s Resizable BAR, how it works, supported motherboards, games, and processors, and how to enable it to increase your gaming performance.
We’ll keep you up to date with the latest motherboards and games that support Nvidia’s Resizable BAR.
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