Nvidia Update May Boost Frame Rates For Older Hardware

Nvidia has been rolling out support for something known as Resizable BAR, which is a feature integrated into PCI Express that can boost frame rates. Using the feature, frame rates can be boosted by up to 10 percent, and the first cards from Nvidia to support the feature were the new RTX 3060 line.

Resizable BAR lets some CPUs access the full graphics frame buffer instead of limiting it to 256-megabyte chunks. Nvidia has now announced that coming in late March, resizable BAR will be available for other GPUs in the 30-series. There are caveats. Namely, you’ll need to be running the right assortment of hardware to take advantage of the feature.

Nvidia is reportedly working with AMD and Intel on chipset support. Currently, AMD Zen 3 CPUs and Intel 10th generation processors are supported with Intel’s 11th generation S chips to get support as well. In certain games, players will see an increase of up to 10 percent in frame rates.

However, the improved frame rates are resolution dependent. That means some games won’t see that sort of improvement. A handful of current games support resizable BAR, including Red Dead Redemption 2, Battlefield V, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and others.