Ever wanted to know what the fuss is about with AMD’s SAM (resizeable BAR)? Well here’s your chance. However, be warned it’s tested on an Intel Z490 motherboard 😛
Taken from TPU … AMD’s recently-introduced SAM (Smart Access memory) feature enables users pairing an RX 6000 series graphics card with a Ryzen 5000 series CPU to take advantage of a long-lost PCIe feature in the form of its Resizable Bar. However, AMD currently only markets this technology for that particular component combination, even though the base technology isn’t AMD’s own, but is rather included in the PCIe specification. It’s only a matter of time until NVIDIA enables the feature for its graphics cards, and there shouldn’t be any technical problem on enabling it within Intel’s platform as well. Now, we have results (coming from ASCII.jp) from an Intel Z490 motherboard (ASUS ROG Maximus XII EXTREME) with firmware 1002, from November 27th, paired with AMD’s RX 6800 XT. And SAM does work independently of actual platform.
The bottom of each graph shows the scores ‘without’ SAM’ enabled.
Paired with an Intel Core i9-10900K, AMD’s RX 6800 XT shows performance increases across the board throughout the test games – which are games AMD themselves have confirmed SAM is working with. This means testing was done with Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Rainbow Six Siege. The results speak for themselves (SAM results are the top ones in the charts). There are sometimes massive improvements in minimum framerates, considerable gains in average framerates, and almost no change in the maximum framerates reported for these games on this given system. Do note that the chart for Forza Horizon 4 has an error, and the tested resolution is actually 1440p, not 1080p.
