AMD’s smart performance boosting tech will benefit Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070
(Image credit: Future)

AMD’s Smart Access Memory (SAM) performance boosting technology will eventually work with Intel and Nvidia hardware, it has emerged.

SAM facilitates the CPU having full access to GPU memory, lifting certain memory constraints and giving considerable performance gains (up to 10% in some games).

Right now, SAM only works with AMD’s new Big Navi graphics cards in tandem with Ryzen 5000 processors (and a 500-series motherboard), so only a niche set of gamers who have forked out for these latest products (and have been lucky enough to get an RX 6000 GPU) can benefit.

However, in an interview with PC World, AMD has made it clear that its GPU division is working with Intel, so SAM will be available to those with an RX 6000 graphics card and an Intel CPU (and motherboard).

The same goes for AMD’s CPU division, which is working with Nvidia to ensure that SAM will also benefit those with Ryzen processors and GeForce GPUs. It probably didn’t escape your attention that Nvidia has already said it’ll be bringing a similar kind of tech to RTX 3000 cards, as SAM works by tweaking PCIe’s resizable BAR (base address register), so there’s no reason it can’t work on non-AMD hardware.

Naturally, this latest announcement is clearly good news, because there was speculation that AMD might try to keep SAM as an exclusive benefit for those with an all-AMD setup, rather than working with rivals to bring it to a wider audience.

Not just flicking a switch

The caveats are that it’s far from clear how long it might take to bring support over to Intel and Nvidia hardware, but AMD did stress that a good deal of development and honing would be necessary to get a sizeable performance boost, and that it wasn’t simply a matter of flicking a switch (unsurprisingly).

Exactly which non-AMD hardware will be supported is another question mark, although it seems like it will require an Ampere GPU on the Nvidia front. Furthermore, as we already know, getting SAM running even on compatible cutting-edge AMD hardware is far from straightforward for the user (involving a fair bit of messing around in the BIOS, which not everyone will be comfortable with, as we note in our Radeon RX 6800 review).

We’ll just have to see how things progress, but when it comes to getting SAM working outside of all-AMD PCs, we’re betting that won’t be happening any time soon.

Via Tom’s Hardware

TOPICS

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

Latest in GPU
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics Card on top wooden desk beside a keyboard
How to update AMD GPU drivers
A character riding their horse through the Japanese landscape of in Rise of the Ronin
Another day, another dreadful PC port - Rise of the Ronin joins the list of woeful PC launches with even an Nvidia RTX 4090 succumbing to stutters
An AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT made by Sapphire on a table with its retail packaging
AMD describes its recent RDNA 4 GPU launch as 'unprecedented' and promises restocking the Radeon RX 9070 XT as 'priority number one'
An AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT vs RX 9070 against a red two-tone background
Well, AMD's Radeon RX 9070 series launch isn't going as smoothly as we thought - and it's because retailers have inflated prices
An Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070
Nvidia RTX 5080 stock is so barren that retailers are holding competitions where you can "win" the right to buy one for MSRP
An Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
Nvidia could unleash RTX 5060 and 5060 Ti GPUs on PC gamers tomorrow, but there’s no sign of rumored RTX 5050 yet
Latest in News
Google Pixel 8a in aloe green showing
Google Pixel 9a benchmark link teases the performance of the upcoming mid-ranger
Quordle on a smartphone held in a hand
Quordle hints and answers for Monday, March 17 (game #1148)
NYT Strands homescreen on a mobile phone screen, on a light blue background
NYT Strands hints and answers for Monday, March 17 (game #379)
NYT Connections homescreen on a phone, on a purple background
NYT Connections hints and answers for Monday, March 17 (game #645)
Apple iPhone 16 Pro HANDS ON
Leaked iPhone 17 dummy units may have given us our best look yet at all four models
A super close up image of the Google Gemini app in the Play Store
It's official: Google Assistant will be retired for phones this year, with Gemini taking over