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  • (upbeat music)

  • - Sometimes you don't realize what you're missing

  • until it's staring you in the face.

  • But when you notice it,

  • it's just ...

  • So sweet, isn't it?

  • Well, that's what we finally have here today with Nvidia,

  • the opportunity to have our cake and eat it too,

  • because they have finally enabled resizable bar

  • on their desktop GeForce GPUs.

  • Get it?

  • Resizable bar, extra sweetness?

  • (laughs)

  • In theory, this is a simple driver update

  • that will unlock extra performance

  • on your existing GPU.

  • Assuming you're lucky enough to own one.

  • But what we're gonna find out

  • is if it is truly something for nothing,

  • or if it's just an illusion.

  • (upbeat music)

  • I'll give you the segue

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  • (upbeat music)

  • Resizable bar has been a big deal

  • ever since AMD announced their implementation

  • of the feature called smart access memory.

  • If you haven't been keeping up with all the buzz,

  • it basically allows a CPU

  • to access all of a PCI Express device's memory at once,

  • rather than in small, 256 megabyte chunks,

  • as has been the case until now.

  • Resizable bar has existed in the data center

  • for some time now,

  • but it couldn't find momentum on the desktop

  • until AMD kicked off this

  • scramble to implement it industry wide.

  • Which kind of raises the question.

  • Why now?

  • Well, in the early days of PCI Express,

  • it wasn't a problem for gamers,

  • because game assets, like textures,

  • were sized proportionally to the video frame buffers

  • of that time.

  • But with the complexity of today's games,

  • and with modern graphics cards

  • having as much as 24 gigabytes of onboard memory,

  • you can easily imagine a situation

  • where the CPU could waste a lot of cycles,

  • getting the data it needs,

  • if it can only address 256 megabytes at a time,

  • ultimately eliminating this waste

  • is where our performance boost comes from.

  • The only problem is that in order to support it,

  • every device in the chain needs to be capable.

  • The CPU, the motherboard, and the PCI Express device,

  • which, in this case is a GPU.

  • Now we've already looked at Nvidia's

  • preliminary implementation of resizable bar

  • on mobile GeForce GPUs, with an MSI GE76 Raider laptop.

  • And at the time we concluded that there was

  • more to the sometimes impressive performance improvements

  • that AMD was getting,

  • than just enabling resizable bar.

  • And we also concluded that Nvidia

  • had some work to do before it was ready for prime time.

  • But even with it fully cooked,

  • it's important to know that not every game

  • or application will benefit,

  • and how the driver handles memory management

  • appears to play a major role

  • in what kind of performance uplift,

  • or fall you can expect.

  • That's where Nvidia's latest drivers,

  • and the free chocolate come in.

  • Our previous investigation showed

  • that the impact differs depending on CPU performance.

  • So we grabbed both, a Ryzen 5 5600X

  • and a Ryzen 9 5900X

  • to represent the mid-range and the high end.

  • We'll be using a GeForce RTX 3080,

  • and for comparison against team red,

  • we've got a Radeon RX 6800 XT.

  • Something to note is that because we're focused

  • on their respective improvements,

  • over stock performance,

  • and not on completely re-reviewing these cards,

  • all of the results for both sides

  • will be in relative percentages.

  • At 1080p, things are already really interesting.

  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't change much,

  • but where Radeon loses some performance

  • in the 5% lows on Ryzen 9,

  • GeForce gains hinting that Nvidia

  • might be doing a better job

  • of reducing die to die latency,

  • on AMD's own CPU, than AMD's graphics team is.

  • GTA V on the other hand,

  • gives GeForce a hard time,

  • with Radeon gaining a bit with Ryzen 5,

  • which further hints that AMD's implementation

  • favors single die CPU's.

  • As for F1 2020,

  • this is one of Nvidia's call-outs for performance uplift

  • and it brings the first major victory for resizable bar.

  • We ended up with slightly higher average frame times

  • across the board for team green, which is bad,

  • but significantly lower, 1% minimum frame times

  • that reach toward a 10% improvement on the 5,900 X.

  • That's good because in almost any game

  • improving performance during challenging scenes

  • is way more important

  • than that when animations are already smooth.

  • This is especially true in competitive titles

  • when performance tends to fall

  • in the heat of battle

  • because of all the character models and effects

  • that are on screen.

  • Again, Nvidia seems to be taking better advantage

  • of the extra course on the Ryzen 9.

  • Forza Horizon 4 is another call-out

  • and another win for Nvidia.

  • Although the pattern flips here,

  • with the Ryzen 5 pulling better improvements

  • across the board than the Ryzen 9.

  • This suggests that memory access patterns

  • play a significant role

  • in whether the die arrangement causes issues.

  • Radeon on the other hand struggles,

  • especially with the Ryzen 9,

  • where minimum frame rates are as much as 6% lower

  • then with resizable bar disabled,

  • which brings us back to our chocolate analogy, doesn't it?

  • It's perhaps unsurprising

  • that there's little change on Flight Sim 2020,

  • given how CPU-bound that game,

  • but Invidia does manage to eek out a slight improvement

  • with Ryzen 5,

  • while Radeon manages a bit better frame rates on Ryzen 9.

  • And Assassin's Creed Valhalla was the call-out title

  • that we found improvements for in our previous video,

  • and that continues today.

  • Nvidia pulls a respectable six to 9% improvement

  • across the board,

  • but then again that pales in comparison to team red,

  • pulling way ahead of stock with up to

  • 18% higher performance.

  • Given the way that both teams are going back and forth here,

  • it seems like additional optimizations can still be made

  • for resizable bar on both sides, which is really promising.

  • Finally, CS GO, it's an older title

  • that already runs well on hardware of this caliber,

  • but we still manage to see a slight improvement

  • in minimum frame rates,

  • at the cost of some average FPS,

  • which is a price that most players should be willing to pay

  • for the reasons that I outlined before.

  • There is no price, by the way

  • for the new sticker packs that lttstore.com,

  • free with every order, checkmate Nvidia.

  • Moving on to 1440P.

  • You might not expect things to get better here,

  • but you'd be wrong.

  • While GeForce stays more or less the same

  • in Shadow of The Tomb Raider,

  • Radeon pulls two to 4% ahead with Ryzen 5,

  • and where GeForce loses in minimum frame rates

  • for no gain on Ryzen 9,

  • Radeon manages to gain about as many average frames

  • as it loses in minimums,

  • which in a non-competitive title like this one

  • might be an okay trade-off.

  • GTA V is a bit all over the place, with Ryzen 5,

  • more or less on par with stock performance on both teams,

  • with a slight tip to Radeon,

  • and Ryzen 9 pulling as much of a win on GeForce

  • as Radeon loses.

  • It's almost like Nvidia stole the frames

  • right out Elisa Sue's pocket.

  • And, F1 2020, again, shows improvements

  • as high as 13% with the only maybe regression

  • coming from Nvidia's average frame rates on Ryzen 9,

  • but we're talking a mere 1% difference,

  • Nvidia comes out ahead in performance improvements

  • for minimum frame rates here,

  • while Radeon pulls better averages.

  • As for Forza, there is no other way to put it,

  • it is a staggering win for Radeon,

  • their worst improvement here is 13%,

  • and yes, your eyes are working fine.

  • That is a nearly 20% gain

  • for Radeon's minimum frame rates.

  • Now, to be clear, Nvidia still wins.

  • Everybody wins when they go over 100% of stock performance,

  • they just don't win as hard.

  • Now with a little extra emphasis on the GPU,

  • thanks to our higher resolution,

  • Flight Sim 2020 shows us near universal improvements,

  • with Radeon actually pulling a healthy 8% improvement

  • in minimum frame rates on Ryzen 9.

  • And then Assassin's Creed is once again

  • a bigger win for AMD than it is for Nvidia,

  • with improvements reaching 16% for both CPUs,

  • and Nvidia managing a very respectable

  • six to 9% lead overstock performance.

  • Isn't it nice when everybody wins, guys?

  • Too bad it doesn't always work out that way.

  • CS GO at 1440p resulted

  • in straight up performance regressions across the board

  • with the sole exception being minimum frame rates

  • on Ryzen 9 for Radeon.

  • GeForce takes the worst of it though, here,

  • with up to a 20% performance loss

  • with resizable bar enabled.

  • That's as big a loss

  • as the largest gains we've seen today.

  • Maybe that's why Nvidia's driver

  • has an easy to find indicator

  • for whether the feature is active.

  • I guess AMD felt it was less likely that users with it

  • enabled would be troubleshooting performance problems.

  • Looking at the big picture here, though.

  • Radeon has the best average gains,

  • running roughly 6% faster than stock at 1440p,

  • and 2% faster at 1080p.

  • While Nvidia's gains hover around 2%,

  • regardless of the resolution.

  • That means one of two things.

  • Either AMD's memory management for Radeon

  • is worse than Nvidia's for GeForce,

  • or Nvidia has some more optimization work to do.

  • The work they've done already since our previous video

  • has clearly paid off handsomely though,

  • so either way it goes,

  • we'll hopefully keep on seeing improvements

  • with future driver revisions on both sides.

  • On that subject, by the way,

  • get subscribed because Nvidia finally rolled a driver

  • that fixes the code 43 error,

  • and we are gonna be all over that in a future video.

  • Changing gears a bit,

  • by now we know that productivity

  • tends not to be affected much by resizable bar,

  • at least for AMD.

  • But for fun, we did some runs

  • so that we could validate that for Nvidia, as well.

  • Blender, well, it's 100%, yup.

  • 100% of stock performance.

  • So how about that?

  • PugetBench shows some dips, especially in AfterEffects,

  • although which CPU causes the dip changes

  • depending on which team GPU you're batting for,

  • and then LuxMark shows basically flat

  • with our Ryzen 9 GeForce combo

  • managing to lose some performance.

  • This clearly isn't the norm,

  • but it's worth taking into account that some applications

  • may suffer for those sweet, sweet gaming gains.

  • So then.

  • Resizable bar, should you turn it on?

  • Assuming that your motherboard manufacturer

  • has rolled out a BIOS with support,

  • and that you have a compatible GPU, the answer's yes.

  • We found that so far

  • there are more situations where it helps

  • than situations where it hurts,

  • and like with our chocolate bar, where it hurts,

  • the benefits of the tasty snack seem far more noticeable

  • than what went missing.

  • Now, if only they could enable it for previous gen GPUs.

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  • So don't wait, get yours today,

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  • So thanks for watching guys.

  • Go check out our previous investigation into resizable bar

  • on Nvidia's mobile platform for a little more context

  • on how far Nvidia's implementation has come

  • in such a short period of time.

  • (upbeat music ending)

(upbeat music)

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