

Are Resizable BAR And SAM The Same Thing? This support could spread to older platforms over the next few years, but don’t get your hopes up. To use this feature, the NVIDIA GPU needs to be paired with a Ryzen 5xxx, Ryzen 3xxx, Intel 10xxx, or Intel 11xxx.
#Amd link gpu memory series#
Since AMD introduced the idea, both Intel and NVIDIA have been working to bring it to every platform and GPU.Īt the start of 2021, NVIDIA officially released Resizable BAR support for 3060 GPUs and laptops with RTX 3000 series graphics cards. We are only beginning to see the true potential of this feature after it has been properly optimized. The original name of this feature is “ Resizable BAR,” and it has existed for quite some time. It is something that was introduced in late 2020 by AMD.ĭespite this, the technology is not new. Until recently, the public hadn’t heard of Smart Access Memory. Most recently, in a 2023 test by Games Choices in 10 different games, SAM does seem to have a significant effect on performance.
#Amd link gpu memory Pc#
In other words, a stronger and more efficient connection between these two essential PC components was crucial.īy bypassing the bottlenecks, the Ryzen chip can now access more of the memory of RDNA 2 graphics cards.īased on AMD’s claims, SAM can deliver a performance boost of around 10% in games such as Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, World of Warcraft: Shadowlands, and many others. This made it logical to improve the processor’s access to the VRAM. Today’s games are far more demanding, and most GPUs come with more than 6GB of VRAM. For a long time, this was more than enough. Previously, the processor could only access a maximum of 256MB of the graphics card’s VRAM. Without this new feature, the way CPUs and GPUs communicate is limited. The general idea of SAM is easy to understand, but where does the performance boost come from? NVIDIA has had a say in this too, but we’ll look at their offerings later. However, it is still limited to RDNA 2 (RX 6000) GPUs. AMD has released motherboard BIOS updates, allowing SAM to work with Ryzen 3000 series CPUs. Otherwise, the feature was unavailable.įortunately, that is no longer the case. This meant only the owners of the latest generations of hardware could utilize SAM. However, this new feature was initially developed only for the Ryzen 5000 generation of CPUs and RDNA 2 GPUs. In simple terms, when you enable Smart Access Memory, a stronger communication stream is created between the processor and the graphics card.
