Problem with enabling resizeable BAR on a 3080

[Tahagomizer]

Hi all, long time lurker, first time help seeker here.

Long story short, I can't enable resizable BAR on a system which should support it.

The system:
Motherboard: MSI Z390I GAMING EDGE AC with the newest BIOS,
i5-9600k,
MSI 3080 Ventus 3X (10GB), BIOS 94.02.26.40.99
Windows 10 Pro

I bought the graphics card early in the cycle, it's a pre-LHR version but the only slightly newer VBIOS in the TPU database seems to be one for a non-OC version (94.02.42.00.2C) with the much newer being for the LHR version of the card (94.02.71.40.6C).

GPU-Z shows that everything is set up correctly aside from "Re-sizeable BAR enabled in BIOS: No" but everything in BIOS is set as it should be (screenshots attached). I definitely prefer to avoid risking the card, which I consider to be the last dGPU purchase in my life, by the VBIOS update process, hence my questions are:

- is it the only reasonable assumption that the problem is caused by old VBIOS or am I missing something? I'd much rather buy a new motherboard and CPU than risk the 3080 if it's more likely to be a motherboard BIOS problem but prefer to avoid buying new stuff at all. I sadly don't have access to newer hardware to test with.

- If it can't be helped, what's the safest way to update the VBIOS? It's a single-GPU system - well, technically a dual-GPU since I have the iGPU. I'm not CLI-averse and hardware safety is my main concern in this endeavor. Also, which version should I try? Is it safe to flash LHR BIOS on non-LHR hardware or is it better to use the non-OC version https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/236987/msi-rtx3080-10240-210308-1 ? I don't mint the lower boost clock as I generally use a custom curve.

Side note: the system has a secondary m.2 SATA drive, also UEFI/GUID. I thought it may be the culprit so I took it out for a while but to no avail.

Thank you in advance for any help in this matter.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I was under the impression Resizable bar required 10th Gen Comet Lake or newer for Intel compatibility?

GeForce RTX 30 Series Performance Accelerates With Resizable BAR Support | GeForce News | NVIDIA

 

[Tahagomizer]

I thought so too but apparently it was backported a while ago:

MSI Brings Resizable-BAR to Intel 300-series and AMD 400-series Motherboards

MSI announced that it is bringing the PCI-SIG resizable base-address register (resizable BAR) support to a variety of older PC platforms, and not just the latest Intel 400-series and AMD 500-series. Among these are Intel 300-series, AMD 400-series, and AMD TRX40. This should come as a boon to...

www.techpowerup.com

If it can't be done on my Z390 than no big deal, I'll probably upgrade to a 12th or 13th gen if I find a good deal, just wanted to check for myself if it made any difference.

 

[Tahagomizer]

Hello to all.
I just got a 12400 and Gigabyte B660I Aorus Pro DDR4, yet the issue remains exactly the same - GPU-z shows Re-sizeable BAR as disabled in BIOS - which probably means vBIOS is the issue and I wasted money on the upgrade. So the question of safely updating the damn thing comes back - what's the safest way to do it and which version will work on a pre-LHR card?

//As a side note: Intel advertising "max turbo" as a turbo frequency is as close to scam as you can get without being an actually illegal scam. I saw at most 4.2 for a split second, for any realistic load it's a 4.0 GHz CPU.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Yeah you need to update the VBIOS with Nvidia's Firmware update if you haven't already.

NVIDIA Support

nvidia.custhelp.com

It's pretty simple, but becuase you are using an MSI card you apparently need to update via the Dragon Center.

GeForce RTX™ 3080 VENTUS 3X 10G

MSI GeForce RTX 3080 VENTUS 3X 10G brings a performance-focused design that maintains the essentials to accomplish any task at hand. A capable triple fan arrangement laid into a rigid industrial design lets this sharp looking graphics card fit into any bu

www.msi.com

 

[phanbuey]

you didn't waste money that CPU is great -- you will get the most out of that 3080 with it.

 

[Tahagomizer]

you didn't waste money that CPU is great -- you will get the most out of that 3080 with it.

That's a fair bit off topic, but I am yet to see a difference higher than 5% in any game, and my guess is that mostly comes from newer PCIe version. I play games in 3840x2160 which is mostly GPU limited and I read in a few places that it's where the re-sizeable BAR has the biggest improvement. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good CPU but, as an upgrade from a 9600k boosting all cores to 4.6GHz, it's kind of underwhelming. At least I got it very cheap.

 

[Valent117]

my experience : i bought a second hand 3060ti gaming x
could not activate rbar, checked everything in the bios
->i then installed MSI CENTER
->IT updated the vbios, now rbar is enabled, had nothing more to do
never had any problem with a bios update

Spoiler: long story

was it my 780ti (to a faster bios), my 7970 (to a faster bios + uefi support (which i added to the faster bios with some tools i found)), i did update my motherboard 2 time to get rbar and w11 support, and many updates on many laptops for me, my parents, my customers. Once i even had to update a bios after a windows 10 update on a old pc, i also remember doing strange things to make a hackintosh

also when rbar released, intel stated that it was integrated in cpu since haswell, and it was down to motherboard manufacturers to enable it via bios (update)

 

[phanbuey]

That's a fair bit off topic, but I am yet to see a difference higher than 5% in any game, and my guess is that mostly comes from newer PCIe version. I play games in 3840x2160 which is mostly GPU limited and I read in a few places that it's where the re-sizeable BAR has the biggest improvement. Don't get me wrong, it's a very good CPU but, as an upgrade from a 9600k boosting all cores to 4.6GHz, it's kind of underwhelming. At least I got it very cheap.

Well if you've ever tried RBAR or 9th or 10th gen CPUs - it typically induces stutter so either way your upgrade will be relevant. The thread is basically concluded though @Fluffmeister is right.

I had an MSI ventus 3080 that needed the vbios flash to enable rbar. I did it on my 10850K Z490 system successfully this way (and then turned it off due to frame pacing issues). But as others have said -- dragon center is the way to go.

If you're only seeing a 5% improvement you're likely bottlenecked on the ram.

 

[Tahagomizer]

Just an update if anyone with the same problem comes here from a search engine:
Updating the vBIOS fixed the issue. As Fluffmeister suggested, I installed MSI Center which, after several refreshes, found an update and the process took approximately 30 seconds + a reboot.
MSI software is of the cancerous UWP kind so you have to either sell your soul to the corporate devil (the devil is micro and soft though) or use another disk for a temporary install.
Thank you all for your time.