Area-51 R2, add Resizable BAR support

Just fyi that this is a Nvidia based feature and as of 3/30/21 Nvidia hasn't officially supported it on that chipset or CPU

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support/

You're right of course, but I never said that it was officially supported (meaning that resizable bar is already enabled for those chipsets), I said it is officially compatible which is not the same.

In order to get resizable bar to works, the CPU needs bit manipulation instructions sets, which was introduced with the Haswell architecture : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_manipulation_instruction_set

So, technically, what's only needed here is really a BIOS update from Dell, which I really hope we will get, as the Area-51 R2 was an impressive and popular model.

I think there's some confusion on this, created by Nvidia, because their statements are confusing on what processors support BAR. AMD has already provided BAR support for Ryzen 5000 and 3000 processors. It's not really the processor that matters, it's the motherboard bios that matters.

My 2600x on a B450 motherboard supports Resizable bar after a bios update. The bios can be updated at any time, you don't need a Ryzen 5000 CPU to be able to flash the bios with a version that supports Resizable bar.

Dell could do it right now if they wanted and have bios updates for all their compatible motherboards.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B450-GAMING-PRO-CARBON-AC

I think it's somewhat hilarious that an MSI MB that is on a previous generation chipset has no issues running AGESA 1.2.0.0 and support Ryzen 5000 and Resizable BAR, while my 4 month old Alienware with a newer chipset and newer motherboard is running a completely outdated AGESA version 1.0.0.6, does not support Ryzen 5000, or Resizable BAR.

It's really funny considering MSI is the OEM provider for the DELL RTX 3000 cards. Not sure who the OEM provider is for the Alienware motherboard, but DELL really needs to get their game together and start bringing these bioses up to date. They can't say it cannot be done, because the B450 above is proof it can be done on older hardware.

I fully agree with you Zinc,

But as Alienware doesn't want to let people with R10 with 3000 serie Ryzen cpu to upgrade to 5000 series, they won't release it, for sure some marketing talks will be provided or nothing at all, they will remain silent.

I really hope I am wrong, but since I had my R10 with a 3700X for more than 3 months now all my questions regarding cpu upgrade, BAR bios updates for GPU, were unanswered or with vague answers meaning "no" for most of the case.

I realized that also. Unfortunate, because I have no issues stripping the CPU and GPU out of my R10 and building a different machine, with a motherboard that does support all the things I want and is properly supported by the manufacturer. That also means my money would not go to Dell anymore, but to someone else. 

I had that MSI board for at least 2 years, and at the time the 2600X was the newest type of AMD processor. MSI still provides full support and bios updates to this day for that board, now adding Ryzen 5000 support and Resizable BAR support. They did not dump support so people were forced to upgrade to one of their newer boards. They just got things done, for their customers.

I paid less than $200 Canadian for that board at the time, and it's a great board with bios options for everything you can think off and more.

The whole idea of the AMD AM4 platform was that you would be able to upgrade CPU without requiring to purchase a new board, or in the case of Alienware, a whole new PC. Many board partners have done so. Alienware chooses not to go that route.

Very unfortunate decision, because I am not going to keep paying for machines that have no upgrade path.

As DELL seems to have bailed on us, our only solution may be to get done ourselves, unfortunately.

I dumped the BIOS of my Area-51 R2, and found something interesting : the BIOS already had support for  "Above 4G Decoding", which is the only requirement for the Resizable Bar technology to work. Some AMD card owners reported SAM working with that setting enabled + disable CSM on motherboards that have not received any BIOS update. I need to do more research, but from what I can tell this does not apply to Nvidia. It would be interesting to dissect a BIOS update which adds support for Nvidia Resizable Bar and see what's really going on there. If that BIOS update comes from an MSI motherboard equivalent to a Dell motherboard, it increases even more the chance of a successful port.

But this is only the theory, in practice it would be extremely difficult to do. For now, I was only able to unhide the PCI Settings menu, allowing me to enable the "Above 4G Decoding" option (which was disabled by default).

Resizable bar has been part of the PCIe spec for several years. My B450 has not only resizable bar support with the latest bios, it was also Ryzen 5000 support. Board is a few years old.

In contrast, this 6 month old high end Alienware has no Ryzen 5000 support and no resizable bar option. And an outdated Agesa version 1.0.0.6.

It's clear Dell cares more about profits than supporting customers machines by ensuring they are future proof and upgradable.

Want Ryzen 5000? Purchase another R10. That's their mentality right now. Hopefully it changes. But I am not going to hold my breath for it.

@Shidell I own the (desktop) Area 51 R2 not the (mobile) Area 51M R2, so I don't know if that BIOS also contains the "Above 4G Decoding" option. But I guess so, as it is much more recent.

Area 51 R2 chipset is X99

https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000178577/alienware-area-51-r2-system-specifications

You are asking for something that even INTEL does not support.

Chipset AND processor are required.

@speedstep You're wrong. Any chipset/motherboard supporting Above 4G Decoding (and the X99 supports it as proved above) could also supports Resizable BAR with the right BIOS update. So it's only up to Dell to provide this update, if they care about their old customers.

X99 being PCI-E Gen 2 is the final nail in the coffin for this nonsense.

No way you have the bandwidth for that.

The two real advantages of 3rd generation PCIe are lower latencies (channels are interleaved) so cards can start working quicker, and reduced data overhead due to a change from 8b/10b encoding used on gen 2 to 128b/130b encoding used on gen 3.

This was discussed as early as WIN7 in 2009

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/doc/guide/pci-express3-phy-implementation-considerations-idf2009-presentation.pdf

I think there's some confusion on Resizable bar support. You need more than Above 4G Decoding, and not all chipsets can support Resizable Bar, even if they have Above 4G Decoding already available.

You need both of the options below in your bios enabled:

• Above 4G Decoding affects the amount of RAM allocated at a time for the processor to work with video memory. And this explains some increase in the consumption of RAM. Previously, you had to huddle in a 4GB block, while with the Above 4G, you can use the whole area.
• Resizable Bar allows the graphics API to pass large blocks of memory to the graphics card. Previously, they communicated in chunks of 256 megabytes, but now you can send a lot at once and from any part of the memory.

It does not look like the X99 chipset supports Resizable bar. Gigabyte Resizable bar Asus resizable bar 

I could not locate any X99 discussion online that confirms resizable bar support for X99.

X99 isn't included in

So I fail to see your "Proof"

Wikipedia is NOT INTEL ARK

Nothing listed about that for X99

Resizable BAR (or AMD Smart Access Memory) technology for the AMD Threadripper platform. The company is now poised to provide similar opportunities for enthusiasts with Intel Core-X platforms. MSI will soon release a beta BIOS for its latest X299 Boards not X99 boards.  Your proof and assertions are without merit.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/81761/intel-x99-chipset.html

X99 is PCI-E GEN 2  LGA 2011

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/122941/intel-x299-chipset.html

X299 is PCI-E GEN 3 LGA 2066

10th gen cpu is LGA 1200

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/201834/intel-z490-chipset.html