Are we getting Nvidia Resizable BAR Support? Predator PO3-620

erikoinenpurnukka

So Nvidia announced this https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support/
Don't see Acer mentioned anywhere, and after updating NVIDIA drivers, my Predator PO3-620 shows the following in NVIDIA control panel:
 

So the question, are we getting Resizable BAR support?
Article suggests that it would require enabling the setting in BIOS (no such setting available atm) and/or VBIOS upgrade to the GPU.

Tyranuus

Just to put a cap on this, I heard back from Acer Support this week that unfortunately ACER have decided they will no longer be rolling out resizeable BAR on these 10th gen Intel models. They have also advised there is unfortunately no BETA or engineering BIOS/VBIOS they could offer out either.

Bit dissapointing. Means if we did want to activate this feature, we would be looking at unofficial VBIOS for alternate ZOTAC/PCPER cards, and new motherboards.

GotBanned

Good question and exactly what I was thinking while sipping my 1st coffee of the day.

If Acer cannot or will not provide us a new BIOS in time, they should at least let us know which BIOS from another manufacturer can be used. Here's a LINK to a GPU-Z validation that I did for PO3-620's 3070. I have attached the info below as well, so there is no need to click any links if someone doesn't want to.



The board layout/PCB looks reference to my untrained eye. Correct me if I am wrong... pretty please?

bk227865

What we first need to be sure of is that we don't need a motherboard bios update. (We probably need one) Without that no Resisable BAR on any GPU

Engineer007

Very good question indeed!

Such lack of basic information from Acer’s side about what parts they use in their desktops. Their product names and drivers are a mess.

I have a Predator Orion 5000 with a RTX 3800 (no brand name given). Using CPU-Z I got similar results like you did, except it is a NVIDIA RTX 3800 model. As subvendor I also got PCPartner. Thanks for posting the screenshot, Gotbanned!

I did some extensive research by googling and comparing a lot of images of PCBs to find out what kind of card this is. I agree that it looked like a reference card, but when I checked out how a reference card for 3080 looks like, it did not quite match with my PCB board, so at least in my case, it is not reference.

I found that PCPartner is actually a huge producer of graphic cards, sometimes they use Zotac as product name. My guess is that Acer has partnered up with PCPartner make their own "OEM" card with Predator labeling on the outside and such.


This is what my card looks like (yes I have put the internals of the Predator PC into another case, and moved the water cooling radiator to the top of the case, and also swapped the PSU with a better one):



By studying a lot of images of Zotac cards, I found one that looks very very similar (all the screws seem to fit, the colors on the fan connectors are the same, etc): Zotac Trinity RTX 3080. 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/zotac-geforce-rtx-3080-trinity/3.html

This is not a reference card. There are only very minor differences that I could find between them. The cooling solution (heat sinks, etc) look a bit different, but the PCB is spot-on. The DVI and HDMI connector setup also looks identical.

I read that it is in theory possible, by some hacking (do not try if you are not prepared to brick your card), to flash another brand of RTX 30-series BIOS to other cards that are similar. I will look into that possibility, as I do not have much faith in Acer putting up the effort to give us updates like Resizable Bar, etc.

I think it will be possible, with any luck, to find a corresponding Zotac model with 3070 card also. Let´s see what we can find out together here, fellow Acer Predator owners:) 

Also I agree with bk22787 that the motherboard will also probably need a BIOS update of some sort to get the Resizable Bar feature upgraded/unlocked. Guess we will have to either wait for Acer on that one, or find out if the motherboard also have a more common "twin" product that we can exploit.


Anyway, I wish the best of luck to everyone with this, and please keep us posted if you find out something of interest

GotBanned

Thanks for the info! I appreciate it.

If it was possible to flash BIOS from some brand name card, that'd be good enough for me. And maybe in time we might get waterblocks for the GPU too, although 3070 doesn't really need it.

Engineer007

Update: I "accidentally" flashed my no name Acer RTX 3080 with the Zotac Trinity BIOS... (lol)

Long story:

I downloaded the flash program and launched the .exe file. I was curious and wanted to check whether it would let me install or not (honestly I expected some kind of warning message or error message to pop up, or at least a requirement to confirm that I wanted to do a flash before it proceeded to do it), but no - it just flashed my card straight away (after a short countdown timer). I didnt even take a backup file of the old BIOS before i flashed it. Very stupid.

Anyway, I let it flash my BIOS - and I was happy to see it complete. After reboot the screen seemed to work - but in some old fashioned VGA mode with low very low refresh rate. I tried to install the NVIDIA driver and got an error first time I tried that. I thought I had messed up bigtime. 

But tried to reboot again, and to much relief the NVIDIA drivers completed the installing this time. In GPU-Z, the card is showing up like a Zotac now.

I can not confirm that Resizable Bar works, because I have no motherboard that supports that yet (shame on you, Acer). But according to the Zotac download page, this BIOS should support it. 

The card seems to work at least as good as before, or better, so far. Played a few hours with no problems and did about half an hour of mining with NiceHash at about 95 mh/s. The fans are not spinning while the card is idle (2D mode) anymore. I expect that this might be adjustable in MSI Afterburn (I hope). With the old Acer BIOS, I was not able to set fans to zero rpm at idle. Yay for that! Both HDMI and DVI ports working so far. It feels good to know I can get updates from Zotac now, and have a name to the card. Maybe the the BIOS flasher thought I actually had a Zotac card? Or maybe there is no limit to what card you can install other BIOSes to. Guess I was lucky

Disclaimer:

I strongly warn against  anybody doing the same thing as I did! I just wanted to give you an update about how it went, as some of you might find this interesting. I was prepared to maybe brick the card. That would make me sad. Very dangerous to play around with these things, it is hardware level and not just another driver that you can reinstall if it goes wrong. These cards cost a lot of money and I would recommend that everyone else wait for a potential fix from Acer instead of playing russian roulette with your expensive graphic cards (cant even buy a new one these days, as they are sold out everywhere). 

GotBanned

That's some good news and bold action right there. I'm not sure Acer sells these boxes with 3080 in Finland, but I will spread the word.

Have you had any problems with the temps? Looks like many people replace thermal pads on their 3090s and 3080s with pretty good results. That's something to think about if you mine a lot. More on this on Reddit and Youtube. 

Engineer007

Thanks. I have no problem with temps for gaming but with full speed mining the ram get hot (but not more than what is common with other brands). The 3080 and 3090 have RAM that is supposed to work up to 110 degrees C. I will check out thermal pads, might ve a cheap solution to cram out a few more m/hs! 

As the PCB is based on Zotac Trinity PCB, I am considering to buy a Zotac Trinity water cooling block made for that card, mostly because it is cool The fan/ noise on the Acer 3080 are not so bad actually, stays within 60C when gaming and 50-60% fan speed. Now also fanless when not gaming

Would suspect the Acer RTX 3070 is based on a Zotac card as well.

Engineer007

Despite all my disapointment in Acers support, I must say it is a big pleasure to play games on my 5120*1440 resolution 244 hz HDR monitor on ultra settings with a stable 250 FPS. Might dip below that sometimes but not noticable with Gsync enabled.

Resizable Bar would be awesome, considering buying a new motherboard soon.

Tyranuus

I would also like to know if we are getting resizeable BAR on these machines.

I have just bought 2 Orion 5000 with the 3080; and the motherboard is more locked down for an enthusiast gaming machine than I had expected. Whilst I expect OEM desktop boards BIOS to be restrictive, this one seems pretty bad given this is an enthusiast grade machine; doesn't even have memory speed selection beyond XMP (which is currently greyed out as the included memory doesn't even support XMP grrr). Made me laugh, as the BIOS/Predator sense offers an overclock on the CPU, but doesn't give you any idea of what settings it changes or applies; not touching that anytime soon haha gets loud enough under CPU full load, and realistically I'm wary that the 120mm radiator and cooler won't be able to handle any OC, would have been nice if they'd put a 240/280mm in the front instead.
The included glass side panel was a nice touch also, even if the machine is a bit garish; there are a few nicer touches on the machine though like the Headphone hangers and the easy removeable 2.5" drive bay mount, so I guess it's a bit of a trade of some good things some bad with this thing.

Realistically this is a big feature announcement from Nvidia, we have Z490 chipsets and an i7, so should be able to get support; I will be pretty disappointed if we DON'T get it at least as an optional update; given this machine has only been out around 6 months. 

Very tempted to try that Zotac VBIOS as I kinda clicked that's what the card was before I read the above; but don't want to risk harming the warranty given the current situation in the wider market; and it's useless anyway without the matching motherboard support.

Also note that whilst the Zotac/PCPartner Predator 3080 looks massive, the VRAM cooling on them is pretty poor, one of the two machines I bought regularly runs around 106-108 degrees, the other is a little cooler but still runs around 98-102. Given the size of the cooler; I had hoped for better; and its ironic, the GPU itself runs pretty cool for a high end one, but the VRAM is 20+ degrees above it!

Engineer007

Tyranuus:
I very much agree about the motherboard. It actually seems pretty nice, but also it is locked/dumbed down hard, in typical OEM fashion. I have never seen so few BIOS settings since my Packard Bell PC in the late 1990's!

Seems like Acer wants to give off this hardcore "predator gaming" vibe for marketing, but still delivering OEM/ business PC experience. The Predator Sense app is a joke, except that it has nice display of temps and load over time for both GPU and CPU. When overclocking with Predator Sense my PC started to sound like a vacuum cleaner, totally unacceptable noise levels.

The case is way too small, with too small fans to exhaust the heat from the 3080 GPU. The AIO cooler for CPU works OK but sits way too close to the graphics card the way it is mounted at the back of the chassis. The heat from the GPU RAM oozes into the radiator, bad for both GPU and CPU temps. 

Part of the heat problem is that the PC is bundled with a Intel i7-10700k, built on 14nm process and gets very warm/uses a lot of power (about 130W vs 75-100W with comparable AMD cpu). 

The 3080 graphics card is seems pretty nice. Not bad GPU temps at all. I opened the backplate (just a few screws to take off to take a peek), and I could see that at least some of the RAM have thermal pads on them. In gaming my GPU temp stays at about 70 degrees max with 50-60% fan speed last time I checked. If you put your hand on the "plastic" backplate (actually I think it is graphite or something, not bad at all compared to metal backplates) you can feel that is is very warm to touch, burning my fingers almost. Even the glass door got so warm when I was mining, I could barely touch it! I was starting to fear that it would explode/crack from heat some day.

Needless to say, I swapped the case for something else. Now I am conisdering getting a new mainboard (dont want to sit around waiting for Acer, and want more overclock controll and resizable bar) and hopefully I will get resizable bar working with my 3080!  

So modifications so far:
-Swapped PSU for a Corsair 850X 850W PSU with no fans spinning at idle and modular design (can remove uneeded cables), that I had lying around. Original PSU was 750W, a tad too  noisy for my taste, but not bad at all.
-Got rid of the 1TB 3,5 mechanical drive that acer put into the machine (who needs a noisy mechanical drive in 2021?).
-Swapped the case/chassis to  a better one from my last PC build (lost the USB-C port in front, but working perfectly apart from that).
-Got rid of the RGB lights and stuff, dont have a need for that personally.
-Moved the original AIO cooler to the top of the chassis to get it further away from the graphics card. Seemed to work very well - I now have temps around 34-75C on the CPU, not going above 80C even when stress testing it (no overclock though).
-Bigger exhaust outlet fan, and added a top mounted 120mm fan beside the CPU cooler.
-Upgraded GPU BIOS to get resizable bar support and zero rpm mode enabled.
-Added a 1TB m.2 SSD to have more room for games.

Future mods coming:
-Ordered some (4) m.2 heat sinks that I will place on top of GPU backplate with thermal pads (at the left side, closest to the display outputs, where the backplate seems to get really hot), to reduce heat. I tried putting a CPU heat sink on top of the card just to check, and the VRAM temps went down about 4-5 degrees when mining. 
-Ordered a new PC Case, Thermaltek P3 (open air solution, I think it looks cool and easy to customize) - will help with GPU and CPU temps as well.
-Considering buying a new mainboard very soon.

Tyranuus

Yes, agree with you, I am loathe to do too much with the machine as I want to keep my warranty intact which will be broken very quickly if I start dismantling. Its just a very schizophrenic build; they've done more right than wrong, but some of the decisions they've made are just a bit...weird. You are right it is quite a small case for them to add such hefty components; adding a larger CPU cooler or fitting it to the top of the case would have made a lot more sense than having it directly above such a high end graphics card.

I am hoping that they will at least offer us resizeable BAR though; I mean if a new feature is touted by Nvidia, it should really be made available on high end gaming machines launched in the last few months; it's not unreasonable to expect that.

I haven't opened the case yet, although I may swap the side panel out as my 2 came with the glass panels. I have an Intel heatsink or two lying around, its not too heavy so I may try sticking it on top of the GPU on the left side near the outputs, and see if it helps my VRAM temps also. If it does begin transferring heat, then the extra surface area will definitely help (plus as there's no thermal paste on it, very easy to just 'drop in place' with no risk of movement, especially as I turned the case fans that I could control up to 70%. It's not quiet, but it stops the VRAM hitting 110 before the GPU fan catches up.

Like you say, the GPU temps themselves including the hotspot are very respectable, I was surprised how low they are; it just seems the VRAM cooling by contrast is not good, or the pads aren't making great contact/doing a great job of transferring the heat.  I knew the 3080/3090 VRAM ran hot, but I was expecting a little better given the size of the fitted GPU cooler; it seems capable based on the GPU temps, just seems like it's not been optimally designed to cool the VRAM, and I really don't like the idea of it living at 100 degrees, even if 110 is considered the limit.

The other benefit of a drop on CPU heatsink sitting on the left hand side near the outputs though is the weight will essentially be on the case mounting and GPU slot, rather than on the card itself, so shouldn't cause any sag.

Another thing that surprised me about the motherboard BIOS is they didn't even bother giving it any UEFI graphics to tie in with the predator styling, its a plain jane looking BIOS like I'd expect on a machine from 20 years ago!

What was your temperature drop from shifting the AIO from the back to the top of the case? I am wondering if I could do that in the stock case; although if the Intel heatsink makes enough difference with the case fans set as they are, it might not be needed.

I actually did want an AMD machine; I know they are much more efficient and faster in some workloads; but sadly that spec was just not available around me at the moment! Was happy to get this machine at the price I did, given how crazy graphics card pricing has gone this last 6 months.

bk227865

Since the PCB's are as good as identical i risked it and flashed my 3070 with then "Zotac Twin Edge" using nvflash.

After that i used the tool from zotac to write the BAR supported firmware update

Both procedures worked and it looks now i have a "Zotac/PC Partner" card.

ALAS as you can see below no resizable bar on my P03-620

So this action is futile atm.

Tyranuus

Yes, Acer need to supply us with both a VBIOS and Motherboard BIOS with the ability unlocked.

IMO they should be doing this as this machine was only launched a few months ago and is both current and should be perfectly capable of supporting the feature.

GotBanned

Nice flash you did there! It required some, er, testicular fortitude for sure! No ReBar action, but at least the fans should stop spinning when doing 2D stuff.

I have the same card and am not being held back by OEM motherboard. When I have time, and have gathered enough aforesaid fortitude, I'll flash mine as well.

bk227865

GotBanned said:

Nice flash you did there! It required some, er, testicular fortitude for sure! No ReBar action, but at least the fans should stop spinning when doing 2D stuff.

I have the same card and am not being held back by OEM motherboard. When I have time, and have gathered enough aforesaid fortitude, I'll flash mine as well.

Don't forget to backup the original firmware. That way you should be able to Restore it if you need for warranty .

Fingarn

Engineer007 said:

Tyranuus:
I very much agree about the motherboard. It actually seems pretty nice, but also it is locked/dumbed down hard, in typical OEM fashion. I have never seen so few BIOS settings since my Packard Bell PC in the late 1990's!

Seems like Acer wants to give off this hardcore "predator gaming" vibe for marketing, but still delivering OEM/ business PC experience. The Predator Sense app is a joke, except that it has nice display of temps and load over time for both GPU and CPU. When overclocking with Predator Sense my PC started to sound like a vacuum cleaner, totally unacceptable noise levels.

The case is way too small, with too small fans to exhaust the heat from the 3080 GPU. The AIO cooler for CPU works OK but sits way too close to the graphics card the way it is mounted at the back of the chassis. The heat from the GPU RAM oozes into the radiator, bad for both GPU and CPU temps. 

Part of the heat problem is that the PC is bundled with a Intel i7-10700k, built on 14nm process and gets very warm/uses a lot of power (about 130W vs 75-100W with comparable AMD cpu). 

The 3080 graphics card is seems pretty nice. Not bad GPU temps at all. I opened the backplate (just a few screws to take off to take a peek), and I could see that at least some of the RAM have thermal pads on them. In gaming my GPU temp stays at about 70 degrees max with 50-60% fan speed last time I checked. If you put your hand on the "plastic" backplate (actually I think it is graphite or something, not bad at all compared to metal backplates) you can feel that is is very warm to touch, burning my fingers almost. Even the glass door got so warm when I was mining, I could barely touch it! I was starting to fear that it would explode/crack from heat some day.

Needless to say, I swapped the case for something else. Now I am conisdering getting a new mainboard (dont want to sit around waiting for Acer, and want more overclock controll and resizable bar) and hopefully I will get resizable bar working with my 3080!  

So modifications so far:
-Swapped PSU for a Corsair 850X 850W PSU with no fans spinning at idle and modular design (can remove uneeded cables), that I had lying around. Original PSU was 750W, a tad too  noisy for my taste, but not bad at all.
-Got rid of the 1TB 3,5 mechanical drive that acer put into the machine (who needs a noisy mechanical drive in 2021?).
-Swapped the case/chassis to  a better one from my last PC build (lost the USB-C port in front, but working perfectly apart from that).
-Got rid of the RGB lights and stuff, dont have a need for that personally.
-Moved the original AIO cooler to the top of the chassis to get it further away from the graphics card. Seemed to work very well - I now have temps around 34-75C on the CPU, not going above 80C even when stress testing it (no overclock though).
-Bigger exhaust outlet fan, and added a top mounted 120mm fan beside the CPU cooler.
-Upgraded GPU BIOS to get resizable bar support and zero rpm mode enabled.
-Added a 1TB m.2 SSD to have more room for games.

Future mods coming:
-Ordered some (4) m.2 heat sinks that I will place on top of GPU backplate with thermal pads (at the left side, closest to the display outputs, where the backplate seems to get really hot), to reduce heat. I tried putting a CPU heat sink on top of the card just to check, and the VRAM temps went down about 4-5 degrees when mining. 
-Ordered a new PC Case, Thermaltek P3 (open air solution, I think it looks cool and easy to customize) - will help with GPU and CPU temps as well.
-Considering buying a new mainboard very soon.

I have gone down same route as @Enginee007. Now gathering guts to flash 3070. How do you back up and restore graphics bios if it all goes south?

bk227865

Fingarn said:

I have gone down same route as @Enginee007. Now gathering guts to flash 3070. How do you back up and restore graphics bios if it all goes south?

First , If it all goes south you might just end up with a expensive paperweight. No guarantees.

Backing up the current bios : nvflash --save backup.rom

bk227865 said:

Since the PCB's are as good as identical i risked it and flashed my 3070 with then "Zotac Twin Edge" using nvflash.

After that i used the tool from zotac to write the BAR supported firmware update

Both procedures worked and it looks now i have a "Zotac/PC Partner" card.

ALAS as you can see below no resizable bar on my P03-620

So this action is futile atm.

Hello,

i did the same way as you, same card, same procedure, same result. But now, my score in 3D Mark Time Spy is less than before, with old VBIOS 13xxx points, with ZOTAC VBIOS 12xxx points.Final to say, it´s not only futile, it´s making the benchmark slower.

Sorry to write without user name, but something gone wrong at registration...

George 

bk227865

Hello,

i did the same way as you, same card, same procedure, same result. But now, my score in 3D Mark Time Spy is less than before, with old VBIOS 13xxx points, with ZOTAC VBIOS 12xxx points.Final to say, it´s not only futile, it´s making the benchmark slower.

Sorry to write without user name, but something gone wrong at registration...

George 

Yes, that is a good find , with the zotac bios i only get a 11940 score in Time Spy , that is low score for a 3070 RTX.

So i might revert back to the Acer bios for now.

Engineer007

Update: RBar now working with new MSI motherboard.