Nvidia Re-Size Bar/SAM support is live for some cards, more in March - 10% performance gains

Vimes · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:38

Andy D said:
Enabling Re-Size bar in my BIOS also enables 4G automatically. CSM goes from the default of Enabled to Disabled.
This turns all of my drives to non bootable.
If I then set CSM Enabled again my system wont boot so have to do a CMOS clear, set back to defaults etc.

Having to do a Windows re-install for UEFI mode that can't be right can it? Will Re-Size bar ever work with CSM mode enabled?

Can't you "just" convert your HD's as needed to GPT from MBR, guessing that is needed..? It is going back some time since I did that but using diskmgmt / EaseUS Partition Master helped..?

https://www.wintips.org/how-to-change-legacy-to-uefi-without-reinstall-windows-10/

backup with Reflect or something first and wait a bit for someone else to offer advice along these lines, just to make sure.

ne0 · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:42

OK I'm confused. Updated Nvidia drivers. Got latest version of MSI Live Update. No vbios listed for my 3090? Tried rebooting but no dice. Anyone had the same or any idea what's going on?

/edit I already have the updated mobo bios.

chrcoluk · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:42

Vimes said:
Can't you "just" convert your HD's as needed to GPT from MBR, guessing that is needed..? It is going back some time since I did that but using diskmgmt / EaseUS Partition Master helped..?

https://www.wintips.org/how-to-change-legacy-to-uefi-without-reinstall-windows-10/

backup with Reflect or something first and wait a bit for someone else to offer advice along these lines, just to make sure.

Not sure how you can do without specialised 3rd party software, but macrium is very reliable.

So I would grab macrium (free version should be fine).

Make an image backup of all partitions on boot drive.

Reinstall windows using GPT.

Then boot from macrium windows PE, and restore just the C: drive, dont restore other partitions because I think they change on MBR vs GPT.

Needles · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:47

ne0 said:
OK I'm confused. Updated Nvidia drivers. Got latest version of MSI Live Update. No vbios listed for my 3090? Tried rebooting but no dice. Anyone had the same or any idea what's going on?

/edit I already have the updated mobo bios.

There is a section in live update where it scans your card
And looks for a new bios, that’s how I found it for my 3080.

Vimes · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:48

@chrcoluk Good idea also ^^^^^^
The point of what I had written tho was to use, example, EaseUS Partition Master as a free version which will do it for you. Also there is a guide I linked which can help you to change MBR based disks to GPT without losing data or needing to reinstall etc.
Macrium in this case would be just to make a backup.

Partition Master...

MBR/GPT Disk Converter

Change disk style from MBR to GPT without data loss, and vice versa.

chrcoluk · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:50

Someone on guru3d has claimed it is togglable via nvidia inspector so not fully whitelist only.

ne0 · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:50

ne0 said:
OK I'm confused. Updated Nvidia drivers. Got latest version of MSI Live Update. No vbios listed for my 3090? Tried rebooting but no dice. Anyone had the same or any idea what's going on?

/edit I already have the updated mobo bios.

also this page suggests the vbios should be available WTH. I'm already using the gaming bios on my card. Anyone got any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

(1) MSI 3000 Series Re-Bar VBios available : nvidia (reddit.com)

ne0 · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:54

Needles said:
There is a section in live update where it scans your card
And looks for a new bios, that’s how I found it for my 3080.

ah ok I found it. I had to do a system scan and then dug a bit deeper and found the vbios. Thanks big time for helping an idiot in need

nvidiamd · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:55

oguzsoso said:
Resizable bar in Godfall destroyed the performance Avg fps dropped from 69.7 to 36.0 . I would like to see someone with 5000 series CPU do the same test. But I have a feeling that it has something to do with VRAM usage. Game is very heavy on VRAM, maybe resizable bar stresses VRAM even more_?

Without RBAR average;

With RBAR average;

Nexus18 said:
Ouch!

Shouldn't be causing any drop....

That is interesting, i said in the past that the more VRAM usage on the AMD cards was (at least in part ) caused by enabling SAM. Now we see the same things happening on Nvidia. Not a problem for the 3090 with its huge VRAM but what about the cards with less VRAM? Not to mention they need R-bar more than the 3090.

Zeeflyboy · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:57

Andy D said:
Enabling Re-Size bar in my BIOS also enables 4G automatically. CSM goes from the default of Enabled to Disabled.
This turns all of my drives to non bootable.
If I then set CSM Enabled again my system wont boot so have to do a CMOS clear, set back to defaults etc.

Having to do a Windows re-install for UEFI mode that can't be right can it? Will Re-Size bar ever work with CSM mode enabled?

You dont need to reinstall... I just converted my drive from MBR to GPT with no data loss using the windows built in mbr2gpt.exe

Took literally maybe 5 mins total.

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/mbr2gpt-tool-windows-10

chrcoluk · 30 Mar 2021 at 21:59

Zeeflyboy said:
You dont need to reinstall... I just converted my drive from MBR to GPT with no data loss using the windows built in mbr2gpt.exe

Took literally maybe 5 mins total.

Indeed, this looks like the way to go.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/mbr-to-gpt

Funny that when I googled I got a different microsoft page which has no mention of this tool and instead tells you to use diskpart to wipe your disk.

I would still do a macrium image backup first though just to be safe in case it malfunctions in some way.

scubes · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:00

This all sounds like a pain bios updates chaging drives etc why can't this be a simple driver update.

ltron · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:06

Nexus18 said:
Yup I know that but wasn't godfall one game where amd see a big gain with SAM? So surely nvidia should too????

It's a game that Nvidia tested and whitelisted so it should definitely be showing an increase in performance otherwise what's the point of the whitelist?

Nexus18 · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:06

nvidiamd said:
That is interesting, i said in the past that the more VRAM usage on the AMD cards was (at least in part ) caused by enabling SAM. Now we see the same things happening on Nvidia. Not a problem for the 3090 with its huge VRAM but what about the cards with less VRAM? Not to mention they need R-bar more than the 3090.

We need more results before we can say it is down to the vram though. As mentioned, could possibly be down to his 2700x, which "technically" shouldn't be supported....

So far, nvidia cards across the board are seeing pretty much the same gains as amds cards in the other games so either his setup or/and godfall could just be an outlier.

EDIT:

Also, from my brief test on forza 4 and cyberpunk, can't say I noticed any increase in vram usage and there shouldn't be in theory (all resize bar/sam does is remove the temp. swap system of 256MB chunks) unless games are coded to use more VRAM.

Janer64 · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:10

scubes said:
This all sounds like a pain bios updates chaging drives etc why can't this be a simple driver update.

Yeah I haven't a clue. I'll have to try and get my gf's friends whizzkid son over to do mine :/

ChemicalWorld · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:13

Here are some results at 1440p in Forza Horizon 4. Gigabyte RTX 3080 Gaming OC - vBIOS F51 (use GPU Z to work out which vBIOS to upgrade to)

Re-Sizeable BAR disabled in BIOS.

Re-Sizeable BAR enabled in BIOS.

deuse · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:25

Just done a bios update for the re-size bar on my MSi Z390M and it won't boot

Going to look at it tomoz.

varkanoid · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:25

I have noticed since enabling this my 5800k idle temp is showing as 50-55c, normally it idles around 33c and with gaming 53c it seems to be working around 3800mhz a lot and boosting to 4800mhz when each core has 10% or less going on often 1-2%
the voltage is 1.4v to 1.46v its like its not downclocking anymore. Bit strange and a bit concerning. Ive not done any changes to BIOS and I dont overclock it anyway.

Anyone else noticed this ?

Update : I went to see if there were any new MB BIOS for my board and since the re-bar one there have been two others. Updated it to latest one now my 5800k idle temp is back into the 30c's so it might be also worth checking to make sure you have the latest BIOS for your motherboard too even if you have one with Resize BAR enabled already.

Grim5 · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:38

Nexus18 said:
We need more results before we can say it is down to the vram though. As mentioned, could possibly be down to his 2700x, which "technically" shouldn't be supported....

So far, nvidia cards across the board are seeing pretty much the same gains as amds cards in the other games so either his setup or/and godfall could just be an outlier.

EDIT:

Also, from my brief test on forza 4 and cyberpunk, can't say I noticed any increase in vram usage and there shouldn't be in theory (all resize bar/sam does is remove the temp. swap system of 256MB chunks) unless games are coded to use more VRAM.

Yeah those results are a major outlier, something in his setup is either incorrect or that particular hardware combo is not actually unsupported. If I have to guess, I think the issue is his motherboard BIOS because that CPU is not supported by Nvidia, its up to the motherboard vendor to hack support in to work, so its likely their fault

no_1_dave · 30 Mar 2021 at 22:41

Seems Palit 3080/3090 owners have to wait until tomorrow so we're missing all the fun today

https://twitter.com/Palit_Global/status/1376839464413134854