As part of the presentation of the Radeon RX – 6000 – series, AMD showed one new technology, which in interaction with the own Ryzen – 4539 – processors the “ultimate gaming platform” should enable. Smart Access Memory (SAM) should enable the processor to access the graphics memory of the graphics card directly. In a similar way, graphics cards with Ampere GPUs, together with Microsoft’s DirectStorage API, should be able to ensure a faster exchange of data. At NVIDIA this is called RTX IO.

The first benchmarks for the Radeon RX – 6000 Series were partly created with activated Smart Access Memory, so you should always keep in mind that AMD can achieve a performance increase of up to 11%, but this is only valid if a Ryzen – 5000 – Processor should be used.

The performance plus of 11% is an extreme example and so far it has not been entirely clear in which applications and in which framework the advantage of the new technology will move. Further values ​​on Smart Access Memory have now been published on a product page. Here the performance difference in Borderlands 3, Gears 5, Hitman 2, Wolfstein: Young Blood and Forza Horizon 4 is shown.

For the latter game, AMD recorded the performance plus of 11%. In the other titles, the increase is between 5 and 6%. In addition to a graphics card from the Radeon RX – 5000 – series and a Ryzen – 5000 – Processor also a mainboard with 500 – Series -Chipset on – certainly to be able to achieve the necessary bandwidth via PCI-Express 4.0.

How exactly Smart Access Memory works and what is behind it is not yet entirely clear. According to AMD, SAM can no longer access just a small portion of the graphics card memory, but rather a significantly larger, if not all, part.

“In conventional Windows-based PC systems, processors can only access a fraction of graphics memory (VRAM) at once, limiting system performance. With AMD Smart Access Memory, the data channel gets expanded to harness the full potential of GPU memory – removing the bottleneck to increase performance. “

As part of the Presentation were from previously 256 MB. Now it should be significantly more. At the start of the Radeon-RX – 6000 – series we will certainly know the details of the technology. In addition to the hardware requirements, AMD has so far only spoken of the need for the Radeon driver in the version 20. 11. 2 as well as a BIOS with AGESA 1.1.0.0. The games will certainly have to support Smart Access Memory and whether SMA is compatible with Microsoft’s DirectStorage API is also not yet known.

We will be the cards of the Radeon-RX – 6000 – Series in conjunction with a Ryzen processor – 5000 – Watch the series and look at the function of the Smart Access Memory.