Thursday, November 26th 2020
AMD Radeon Smart Access Memory Coming to 400 Series Motherboards
AMD announced Radeon Smart Access Memory (SAM) alongside the RX 6800 series as a feature to increase video memory available to the CPU. SAM is AMD's implementation of the resizable BAR feature found in the PCI Express specification. AMD Smart Access Memory is only available when using an AMD Ryzen 5000 series process and AMD Radeon RX 6800 series graphics card on a compatible motherboard. The feature was initially advertised as a 500 series motherboard exclusive feature but AMD has recently released the new AGESA v2 1.1.0.0 update which should enable support for SAM on B450 and X470 motherboards with a BIOS update.
Source:
Computerbase.de
28 Comments on AMD Radeon Smart Access Memory Coming to 400 Series Motherboards
Emulators will love this.
No, I think I'll wait for benchmarks.
Both sides fudge benchmarks. That's par for the course in this industry.
No, Nvidia's made false claims about both. They lied about maxwell and pascal's support for Async-compute when in fact they only have software support (which provides 0 performance benefit) and people are still having issues to this day: www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/forums/game-ready-drivers/13/236511/async-compute-disabled-at-driver-level-for-maxwell/
When Intel and NVIDIA implement it, there will be one line in the driver changelog - 'now supports AMD SAM on xxx model'. Not Intel SAM, not NVIDIA SAM.
Even if it's just 2% or a bit more, they've achieved the mission - made the technology, connected it to themselves and grab the 'marketing points'. Just look at titles - AMD SAM will work with NVIDIA cards too; Intel CPUs too.
My Radeon 6800XT is arriving today. :D
The problem for AMD is at the moment to make enough 6800 series cards available for people who want to buy them and use this feature. :shadedshu:
Not that it makes a world of difference on a 1000 series ryzen + RX 5500 card, but hey, actually using the technology as it is meant to is always a pro in my book, and I like to endorse, as opposed to only implementing half the features a whole technology standard was invented for.
This should be turned on for every card; regard of CPU/mobo since it's a tech that should work on any platform.
:)