A Reddit user has posted their results of manually enabling Resizable BAR for Dead Space and reported impressive results. While Resizable BAR might be on by default for some motherboards it is always worth checking your BIOS to be sure. It is also worth noting that the feature is not always on automatically for every game and this can be due to it not yet having been added to NVIDIA’s whitelist of compatible games via a driver update. However, it is possible to manually enable Resizable BAR with NVIDIA Profile Inspector.
Reddit user sxKYLE has posted screenshots of their results in turning on the feature for the barely one-week-old game. Resizable BAR is an optional PCI Express interface technology that can allow assets to be fully loaded to the frame buffer and thus improve performance in certain games. The feature was first introduced with NVIDIA’s RTX 30-series graphics cards. Performance gains will vary and it does require compatible hardware to be used.
What Is Resizable BAR (via NVIDIA)
“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.
With the ever-growing size of modern game assets, this results in a lot of transfers. Using Resizable BAR, assets can instead be requested as needed and sent in full, so the CPU can efficiently access the entire frame buffer. And if multiple requests are made, transfers can occur concurrently, rather than queuing.“
When it was introduced and tested on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 there were gains of up to 12 percent so it should come as no surprise that an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080, with its improved architecture, could easily surpass that mark. In this particular scenario, an Intel i7 9700K was used with an RTX 4080 while testing the feature at a 21:9 ultrawide resolution of 3440×1440 where average framerates jumped from 76 FPS up to 111 FPS.
Why it is not automatically on for every game
A number of users have asked in the thread why NVIDIA doesn’t just have it turned on by default and an NVIDIA Forums Representative responded to the question by explaining that there’s more to it than that.
“It is not so straightforward. We test games across multiple levels and across each new build of a game before release. So while some users may see a bump in performance in one level/map, if you try a different level/map, the game assets might be quite different and users may not benefit as much or worse experience a regression in FPS/frame times.
As for the Dead Space remake, we are still testing ReBAR performance so there is a chance we may enable it in a future driver.
For those who are not familiar with Resizable BAR, I encourage you to read our GeForce.com article on this subject:
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support“
So while enabling Resizable BAR manually may provide impressive results it may not be consistent, or stable, depending on how a game is designed. Other users in the thread also noted that video cards with less VRAM may have issues if the game demands more memory than a card has while the feature is on.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →Very interesting.
Anyone know how to force AMD Smart memory at the game level?
One of the replies I read in the OP thread said that they thought AMD used an opposite approach and it is on automatically and that they just have a blacklist to prevent games known to have issues. I don't know if this is true though.
I found this forum from this link here:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.thefpsreview.com/2023/02/02/enabling-resizable-bar-via-nvidia-profile-inspector-reportedly-provides-up-to-46-percent-fps-gains-in-dead-space-remake/[/URL]
I'm going to say straight out that article is LYING. Every single place that talks about this is saying to load a profile that simply doesn't exist in built in games listing, and games not already on the in game listing cannot be added into the program either.
The latest version of that program is from Nov 26, 2022.
The program has no browse and add game option so there is no possible way you can use the nvidia profile inspector to do anything to Dead Space remake.
To top it off what it says to get the profile to show up is also false. Having up to date Nvidia drives has no relation to the program itself.
Please stop spreading this false garbage around.
Might want to check yourself before spreading you own misinformation.
Really, then what is this?
and this:
Might want to familiarize yourself with how to use a program before calling out your own false claims.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Nvidia_Profile_Inspector
https://github.com/Orbmu2k/nvidiaProfileInspector/releases/tag/2.4.0.3
Well, since I went ahead and enabled it this morning I decided to do some testing of my own. Impressive. It's now another game I can add to the list that a 4090 can play w/o DLSS. No exaggeration, with ReBar, enabled and DLSS Q I was getting 100-130+ FPS in 4K. Lol! So I turned off DLSS, set AA to TA (the only AA option besides DLSS/FSR), and was getting 60-70+ FPS which is plenty good for me.
HDR seems weird on this one. My monitor says it's kicking in but AB isn't changing color like it normally does. Overall the game still looks fantastic though. As noted in a number of other places, each level will still have brief stutters right after it begins while various caches fill. Just let it do its thing and then delve into the level. With the 5800X3D rig, these stutters were minimal. I occasionally noticed others while exploring but they were shorter than the blink of an eye.
VRAM usage varied from 9-13GB at 4K. Oh, and get this, the game instantly loaded after clicking on continue from the main menu. I went through the normal preparing shaders thing the last time I tried this game at release but haven't really been back since. I did notice my CPU/Chipset fans ramped up during the initial loading before the main menu so I'm guessing it loaded everything then at the max speed of the Gen 4 NVMe drive/port I've got it installed on. I've seen similar behavior with Spider-Man Remastered and Horizon Zero Dawn but not this fast and it was a pleasant surprise to just watch the main menu fade right into the game. Both fans went back to normal by the time the menu screen appeared.
I definitely need to put more time into playing but I do recommend to those with NVMe drives to give it a shot by enabling Rebar just to see how it performs. Seeing the game on the C2 is pretty amazing too. They really did a nice job with all the new textures while keeping the old look.
Oh, just to add that I went ahead and tested this with Witcher 3. Since I've played that game so many times and in different ways (3D/SLI/1080p/1440p/4K and on every rig I've had since it came out including laptops not including around 3-4 different Halk Hogan packs), I'm aware that it's actually fairly complicated, between environmental effects, character animations, multiple different types of NPC animations, a plethora of shadow and lighting effects and reflections, transparencies, etc., it has always a had lot going on. Well, it's also a prime example of what that rep from NVIDIA said in regard to Dead Space. Although so far, I'm seeing nothing but positives for DS, it was more of a mixed bag with W3. Some things seemed more fluid and maybe FPS increased slightly but for the most part, it wasn't as dramatic of a difference. I'm also pretty sure it cause a lighting glitch for the building window glass transparencies in that they all have a purple glow now but it's also possible CDPR did an update I don't know about that caused this (similar things have happened with the original version). I'll do more testing tonight and turn it back off and let you know about the purple glow thing.
I knew I'd remembered hearing about this before and here you go:
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I'll still see if toggling rebar or rt fixes it, tonight when I get home.