NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060, support for Resizable BAR

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060

NVIDIA has announced support for the new Resizable BAR technology for GeForce RTX 3060 video cards and GeForce RTX 30 series notebook GPUs. Support for the remaining desktop GPUs (RTX 3060 Ti / 3070/3080/3090) will be added by the end of March.

Resizable BAR to increase frame rate

Resizable BAR is an optional technology PCI Express interface. As the user moves into the digital world, the GPU memory (VRAM) continuously transfers textures, shaders and geometry from the CPU to the GPU through small 256MB blocks. Given the complexity of modern games, the number of transfers is very high.

Using Resizable BAR, resources can be requested when needed and sent in full, so the CPU can efficiently access the entire frame buffer of the GPU. In the case of multiple requests, the transfers are done simultaneously, without queuing, as normally happens.

Resizable BAR allows you to increase the frame rate up to 10%, but this depends on the game, the resolution and the hardware platform. In fact, updated drivers are not enough to take advantage of the technology. Also required are 10th Gen AMD Ryzen 5000 and Intel Core processors (or future Rocket Lake-S), AMD 400/500 chipset motherboards and Intel Z490 / H470 / B460 / H410 with updated BIOS.

With the new Game Ready Game Drivers released a few days ago the Resizable BAR technology has been enabled for the GeForce RTX 3060 and the following games: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Battlefield V, Borderlands 3, Forza Horizon 4, Gears 5, Metro Exodus, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Watch Dogs: Legion. Support is therefore limited, but will increase over the next few weeks.

Source: NVIDIA

Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 Is Fine, but Seriously, Just Splurge on the 3060 Ti

Photo: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

I know, I know, it’s hard to be excited about new graphics cards when there’s a chip shortage and scalpers and crypto miners are snatching up all the stock before regular ol’ consumers can buy ‘em. I know. Waiting sucks, especially when new GPUs keep cropping up. But while that money is burning a hole in your pocket, you have the time to wait for reviews to roll in and really think about what new graphics card will work best for the rig you’re upgrading or building. Or perhaps you can take this time to save some extra money for the bigger and better GPU. That’s the position I’d most likely find myself in deciding between Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060 and RTX 3060 Ti. If the RTX 3060 stock is available and you have can easily afford it, I’d take the Ti version over the base 3060 in a heartbeat.

The RTX 3060 is not a bad card. It gets superb 1080p and 1440p performance in the majority of games, and can hit over or close to 60 frames per second with ray tracing on. It covers a lot of ground for having similar specs to its more mature Ti sibling. But the RTX 3060 Ti just gives you better performance for your dollar, and part of that comes down to how the two cards are specced.

While the RTX 3060 has 12GB of VRAM (video memory) compared to the 3060 Ti’s 8GB, and even a slightly higher boost clock than the Ti, the RTX 3060's 192-bit memory bus drags it down. The smaller the memory bus, the less data than can flow to and from the GPU. The RTX 3060 Ti has a 256-bit memory bus, so its overall bandwidth is almost 100 Gbps more than the RTX 3060. More bandwidth means better performance, of course, but it was somewhat surprising just how much better the RTX 3060 Ti preformed compared to the 3060 for being only $70 more. (I’m talking MSRP prices here—if you’re dealing with scalpers, all bets are off.)

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060What is it?

Nvidia's newest, and so far cheapest, RTX 30-series GPU

Price, decent performance

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Not a big jump in performance compared to the RTX 2060, small memory bus

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I compared the RTX 3060 to the 3070, 3060 Ti, and the older RTX 2060 using a system configured with the following parts: Intel Core i9-10900K CPU; Asus ROG Maximus Extreme XII motherboard; 16GB (8GB x2) G.Skill Trident Z Royal DDR4-3600 DRAM; Samsung 970 Evo NVMe M.2 500GB SSD; Seasonic Focus GX-1000 PSU; and a Corsair H150i Pro RGB 360mm AIO for cooling.

The RTX 3060 averaged a 5-15 fps lead over the RTX 2060, depending on the resolution. (The higher the frame rate gap, the lower the resolution.) The RTX 2060 was $349 when it was first released—just $20 more than what the 3060 retails for. The RTX 3060 Ti averaged a 15-30 fps lead, and in some cases, 40 fps, over the RTX 3060.

That sort of puts the 3060 in a weird spot; it gets better performance for less over the previous generation, but it’s not enough to make a compelling argument for someone with an RTX 2060 to upgrade to a 3060. In this case, that massive frame rate gap between the 3060 and 3060 Ti makes shelling out some extra cash totally worth it.

Also, there is no Founders Edition of the RTX 3060—just cards from partners like Asus, MSI, etc. That’s not such a terrible thing for most people I would imagine. The card reviewed here is from EVGA and it works great. It even comes with the standard 8-pin power connector, unlike the Founders versions of the RTX 3080, 3070, and 3060 Ti that have a svelte 12-pin connector but need an adapter that juts out of the card like a two-headed snake. But if you prefer the aesthetics of Nvidia’s Founders cards, you are also out of luck with the RTX 3060 on that end, too.

Graphic: Joanna Nelius/Gizmodo

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