I'm considering enabling Resizable BAR on my RTX 3060 Ti, but I'm concerned because some performance comparisons show higher VRAM usage with it enabled. Since the card only has 8GB, could that cause problems in newer, VRAM-heavy games, especially at 1080p?
My system has an Intel i5-10400F, an MSI B560M PRO-E motherboard, 16GB of RAM, and an AOC 24G2 1080p/144Hz monitor. Have other RTX 30-series owners noticed a meaningful increase in VRAM usage? Is there any real downside to leaving Resizable BAR enabled, and would you recommend using it on this system?
3 Answers
The concern about 8GB is understandable, since newer games can already push that limit at 1080p. However, Resizable BAR generally isn’t the thing that suddenly makes an otherwise playable game run out of VRAM. Check actual performance and memory usage in your demanding games rather than relying only on comparisons.
There’s no meaningful risk in trying it. Test a few games you actually play and compare frame rates, stuttering, and VRAM usage. If a particular game performs worse, you can disable it again.
I’d leave it enabled. The extra VRAM shown in some games is often just the game allocating more available headroom rather than actually needing substantially more memory. Performance can improve, stay the same, or drop slightly depending on the title, so there isn’t a universal result. Make sure both Above 4G Decoding and Re-Size BAR are enabled in the BIOS, since enabling only one won’t do anything.
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