[Manuel Calavera]

Evo ga, otvara se

AMD Smart Access Memory Enabled on Intel Z490 Motherboard, Shows Noticeable Performance Gains With Radeon RX 6800 XT

AMD's Smart Access Memory technology which is a fancy name for BAR (Base Address Register) will not require users to invest in a PCIe Gen 4 platform as it will be supported by PCIe Gen 3 too. Based on what we know so far, BAR essentially defines how much discrete GPU memory space can be mapped and today's PCs are typically limited to 256 MB of mapped memory. AMD claims that with SAM (Smart Access Memory), they can access all of the GPU memory, removing bottlenecks to allow for faster performance.

AMD officially only mentioned that SAM (Smart Access Memory) would be supported by its Ryzen 5000 CPUs and the respective 500-series chipset based motherboards. However, board makers not only enabled support on AMD's 400-series motherboards but are also adding support to Intel's 400 series motherboards such as the Z490 variant tested here.