AMD’s latest Smart Access Memory (SAM) is one of the handy features increasing the overall performance in-game. It is one of the key features introduced by AMD during its Radeon RX 6000 Keynote. MSI announced that it would be pushing Smart Access Support on all of its 500 series motherboards.
AMD Smart Access Memory Support now across all X570, B550, and A520 MSI motherboards
MSI is providing the Beta BIOS version for all its AMD 500 series motherboards. All the 500 series motherboards will now have the option to enable Smart Access Memory on the BIOS settings. The beta BIOS is available on MSI’s website. Please check your current board BIOS by visiting the product page. The 32 MSI 500 series motherboard will get support for the Smart Access Memory.
After updating the BIOS, enabling the Smart Access Memory is simple. From the BIOS, navigate here, Settings>Advanced>PCI Subsystem Settings. From there, enable the Re-Size Bar feature. The Smart Access Memory works only on AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU and Radeon RX 6000 GPUs. Nvidia owners might have to wait until the company implements it.
The Smart Access Memory is just based on PCIe Technology’s Base Address Register (BAR). The BAR defines the discrete GPU memory space mapped to the CPU. Previously the CPU only was able to access sliver of VRAM. The BAR’s assigned small VRAM space wasn’t enough, limiting system performance.
AMD’s Smart Access Memory expands the data channel using PCIe bandwidth, allowing the CPU to access the VRAM fully. Increasing the BAR size enables the CPU to access more data reducing the bottleneck in the cards. Smart Access Memory is just AMD’s naming scheme for increased BAR size. Nvidia is following similar features on all of its GeForce cards with a 6% performance improvement. The Smart Access Memory improves FPS on higher resolution textures games.
The Smart Access Memory sure does improve performance on the all AMD system. But only selected titles gain substantial improvement. The Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 launched yesterday, garnering much attention. AMD 1st generation Ray-tracing technology isn’t great but shows the capabilities of AMD and technological advancement.
