Does AMD SAM work with b450 motherboards?

[vradu007]

I have a Ryzen 7 2700x cpu socketed inside a Gigabyte B450 Gaming X motherboard.

I have just bought a Radeon rx 6800

Would I be able to use SAM if I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 5600x?Is it worth the about 180 dollars investment?

For money reference, I live in Romania, where 1100 dollars for a Radeon RX 6800 Gigabyte gaming OC is considered a fair price in this wonderful time, and where I just resold my 8 months old RX 5700xt Gigabyte gaming OC for 650 dollars.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

No, it requires all of the following...

System Requirements for AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM)

Hardware:
AMD 500 Series Chipset Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processor
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics

Software:
Latest AMD Ryzen Chipset Driver
AMD Radeon Software Driver 20.11.2 or newer
Latest Motherboard BIOS (based on AMD AGESA 1.1.0.0 or later)

How to Enable SAM:
1.) Enter the System BIOS.
This is typically done by pressing the <DEL> or <F12> key during system startup
2.) Navigate to Advanced Settings or Advanced menu
3.) Enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” shown above.


If you plan to take fully advantage of any Ryzen 5000 series CPU, then you of course would want to be using B550 or X570 Motherboard.

[drevo]

MN

[Magma Dragoon]

SAM is like 2% improvement, it doesn't matter enough to be a consideration when buying hardware. Whatever Lake and Ampere will probably support something similar soon.

[Spec_Ops_Ape]

Some motherboard vendors have already added support for SAM on B450/X470 motherboards and AMD is currently validating SAM on these chipsets. You do still need a Zen 3 chip and RDNA2 GPU but the other major players are working on support for this feature as well, shouldn't be to far away.

vradu007님이 먼저 게시:

Would I be able to use SAM if I upgraded to a Ryzen 5 5600x?Is it worth the about 180 dollars investment?

Personally I wouldn't consider SAM as a reason to upgrade but you will see a performance uplift, faster core clocks and much better IPC not to mention a better memory controller.

[mtono]

i would in any case upgrade to the ryzen 5 5600x. if you do, you will have a fast processor for a long time. the 5600x has a very fast single core power, which is helping out for gaming(i just read it in german on a website for pc users(computerbase). the difference is about 25%). have a look at your mainboards manufatcurer's website, if your mainboards supports SAM. in my case, i would buy the 5600x. just my opinion. the 2700x is "old stuff" anyhow. i would upgrade.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

^ True. Even 5600X is like 4X the CPU power of a 2700X or 3600X

[xSOSxHawkens]

SAM might work on your board. Only way to tell for sure is update the BIOS and check...

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

No, it requires all of the following...

System Requirements for AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM)

Hardware:
AMD 500 Series Chipset Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processor
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics

Software:
Latest AMD Ryzen Chipset Driver
AMD Radeon Software Driver 20.11.2 or newer
Latest Motherboard BIOS (based on AMD AGESA 1.1.0.0 or later)

How to Enable SAM:
1.) Enter the System BIOS.
This is typically done by pressing the <DEL> or <F12> key during system startup
2.) Navigate to Advanced Settings or Advanced menu
3.) Enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” shown above.


If you plan to take fully advantage of any Ryzen 5000 series CPU, then you of course would want to be using B550 or X570 Motherboard.

SAM has been confirmed to work on Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 2000, on B450 and x470, and with non-6000 series Radeon GPU's (such as 5700/xt).

Aditionally RBAR is also working on numerours configs above but with Nvidia graphics.

https://wccftech.com/msi-amd-smart-access-memory-amd-ryzen-3000-ryzen-4000g-cpus-with-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-gpus/

https://videocardz.com/newz/asus-and-msi-demonstrate-resizeable-bar-amd-smart-access-memory-working-on-zen-and-zen2-cpus

[Bad 💀 Motha]

xSOSxHawkens님이 먼저 게시:

SAM might work on your board. Only way to tell for sure is update the BIOS and check...

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

No, it requires all of the following...

System Requirements for AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM)

Hardware:
AMD 500 Series Chipset Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 5000 Series Processor
AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series Graphics

Software:
Latest AMD Ryzen Chipset Driver
AMD Radeon Software Driver 20.11.2 or newer
Latest Motherboard BIOS (based on AMD AGESA 1.1.0.0 or later)

How to Enable SAM:
1.) Enter the System BIOS.
This is typically done by pressing the <DEL> or <F12> key during system startup
2.) Navigate to Advanced Settings or Advanced menu
3.) Enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support” shown above.


If you plan to take fully advantage of any Ryzen 5000 series CPU, then you of course would want to be using B550 or X570 Motherboard.

SAM has been confirmed to work on Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 2000, on B450 and x470, and with non-6000 series Radeon GPU's (such as 5700/xt).

Aditionally RBAR is also working on numerours configs above but with Nvidia graphics.

https://wccftech.com/msi-amd-smart-access-memory-amd-ryzen-3000-ryzen-4000g-cpus-with-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-gpus/

https://videocardz.com/newz/asus-and-msi-demonstrate-resizeable-bar-amd-smart-access-memory-working-on-zen-and-zen2-cpus

Well all the official info directly from AMD website says otherwise and is as Ive already stated. Plus its a waste of your time anyways and won't help enough. What will help more is just use a decent CPU, RAM and GPU. Such as Ryzen 5600X + 16 or 32 GB of DDR4-3200 or 3600, along with an NVIDIA RTX 20 or 30 series GPU. Also would help to run your OS + Apps + Games all via SSD types.

[Sinister80s]

Magma Dragoon님이 먼저 게시:

SAM is like 2% improvement, it doesn't matter enough to be a consideration when buying hardware. Whatever Lake and Ampere will probably support something similar soon.

it really depends on the game. Some games can have more than a 10% improvement.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

xSOSxHawkens님이 먼저 게시:

SAM might work on your board. Only way to tell for sure is update the BIOS and check...




SAM has been confirmed to work on Ryzen 3000 and Ryzen 2000, on B450 and x470, and with non-6000 series Radeon GPU's (such as 5700/xt).

Aditionally RBAR is also working on numerours configs above but with Nvidia graphics.

https://wccftech.com/msi-amd-smart-access-memory-amd-ryzen-3000-ryzen-4000g-cpus-with-nvidia-geforce-rtx-30-gpus/

https://videocardz.com/newz/asus-and-msi-demonstrate-resizeable-bar-amd-smart-access-memory-working-on-zen-and-zen2-cpus

Well all the official info directly from AMD website says otherwise and is as Ive already stated. Plus its a waste of your time anyways and won't help enough. What will help more is just use a decent CPU, RAM and GPU. Such as Ryzen 5600X + 16 or 32 GB of DDR4-3200 or 3600, along with an NVIDIA RTX 20 or 30 series GPU. Also would help to run your OS + Apps + Games all via SSD types.

Saying it wont help is entirely wrong though. SAM, and its benefit, seems to be entirerly down to the game and the system.

I have seen multiple (read about 8 different people) over the course of the past 3 weeks post before/afters with 20+ FPS gains in specific games (one of the most popular is one of the tomb raiders) and specifically with Ryzen 2k builds (most were on 2700x builds, though I think I saw onne or two 2600's).

Point is, for his build and his game he *might* get a decent gain. Big might, but still a might none the less.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

But so many games run poorly on AMD GPUs, thats why I said don't bother.
A majority of all PC games very much favor an NVIDIA GPU.

[xSOSxHawkens]

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

But so many games run poorly on AMD GPUs, thats why I said don't bother.
A majority of all PC games very much favor an NVIDIA GPU.

so not true at all anymore...

https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2174/bench/1440p.png

I see the majority of those games favoring AMD...

In the 3080 vs 6800xt they are close af too.

Games dont favor one or the other much anymore. And (at least within newest gen) they seem to favor AMD when they do have a favor.

[vradu007]

xSOSxHawkens님이 먼저 게시:

Bad 💀 Motha님이 먼저 게시:

Well all the official info directly from AMD website says otherwise and is as Ive already stated. Plus its a waste of your time anyways and won't help enough. What will help more is just use a decent CPU, RAM and GPU. Such as Ryzen 5600X + 16 or 32 GB of DDR4-3200 or 3600, along with an NVIDIA RTX 20 or 30 series GPU. Also would help to run your OS + Apps + Games all via SSD types.

Saying it wont help is entirely wrong though. SAM, and its benefit, seems to be entirerly down to the game and the system.

I have seen multiple (read about 8 different people) over the course of the past 3 weeks post before/afters with 20+ FPS gains in specific games (one of the most popular is one of the tomb raiders) and specifically with Ryzen 2k builds (most were on 2700x builds, though I think I saw onne or two 2600's).

Point is, for his build and his game he *might* get a decent gain. Big might, but still a might none the less.

The reason I am interested in SAM is that I saw an 18% uplift in AC Valhalla on a recent review (this morning) on Hardware Unboxed.
Here is another thing I want to ask. Will updating the bios to the version that supports Ryzen 5000 'brick' my board's capability of running ryzen 2000 cpu's? I read this will be the case some time ago, when it was announced that b450 motherboards will indeed support ryzen 5000, so that is before the launch of ryzen 5000, in like september

[Bad 💀 Motha]

It might have been added to older boards for those older Ryzen cpus. First you'll have to update your bios. Then go check your bios for the options that would allow SAM to work.

[vradu007]

I just bought a brand new Gigabyte OC RX 6800, and I get the same if not worse performance than my old 5700xt, in AC Valhalla and COD Black Ops.

I will try and post below photos of my utilization stats.. CPU utilization hovers at about 60%. Any causes you can think of? Thank you