AMD’s Good Entry Reminiscence (SAM) tech, which boosts efficiency and helps video games run sooner – some titles greater than others – is now accessible to of us who don’t have certainly one of AMD’s latest 500 collection motherboards, at the least in unofficial beta type.
SAM has solely simply come into play and requires you to have certainly one of AMD’s new Massive Navi graphics playing cards and a brand new Ryzen 5000 processor, and the opposite stipulation was having a brand new 500 collection motherboard.
There was some concern that AMD would possibly hold SAM unique to those new elements as an incentive to improve, however the excellent news is that this isn’t the case, and people with last-gen X470 and B450 motherboards will – and in some circumstances, can now – profit from the tech. (By the way, SAM may even be coming to house owners of Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs finally, as we lately came upon).
SAM permits the CPU to get full entry to GPU reminiscence, lifting reminiscence restrictions to be able to give an honest efficiency increase (some video games can profit to the tune of 10%, others extra like 5% – so it’s definitely a worthwhile little bit of tweaking). The draw back is it’s not trivial to get SAM working, and it entails taking part in round within the BIOS, which not everybody might be comfy doing (as we focus on in our Radeon RX 6800 evaluate).
Solely sure X470 and B450 motherboards are supported proper now, in beta type, and if yours is certainly one of them, you will want to make sure that you seize the BIOS replace that brings in AGESA v2 1.1.0.0.
If you wish to run a Ryzen 5000 processor – which as talked about is a required element for SAM – you’ll have to improve to AGESA v2 1.1.0.0 anyway, as that is crucial for a Zen 3 chip.
Unofficial launch
Supported motherboards with the requisite beta BIOS updates embody ASRock with its B450 boards, and Gigabyte with assist for X470 and B450 boards. Keep in mind that these are unofficial updates, although, in order ever with beta firmware, apply at your individual danger.
MSI has additionally rolled out assist for X470 and B450 motherboards to testers at this level, however is ready for the official AGESA firmware launch which is predicted to reach in January 2021 earlier than rolling out to prospects. Asus has an AGESA 1.1.8.0 firmware with SAM assist, however once more that is beta, and certainly not purported to be launched to the general public – AMD has confirmed as a lot, and the official line is to attend for the aforementioned official launch in January.
That’s solely a few months away, in fact, and which may offer you time to really discover a Massive Navi graphics card and/or Ryzen 5000 CPU to purchase, as a result of proper now, they’re skinny on the bottom to say the least.
