General Discussions

[knas]

Amd needs to promote the SAM technique in the media because unfortunately most reviewers do not use AMD processors.It is extremely embarrassing to see games like QUAKE II a game created two decades ago that has more coverage than Amd's SAM.Τhe best defense is offense .

Always friendly

[colesdav]

That is an Nvidia feature as well now correct?

[Thanny]

No, SAM is an AMD marketing term for PCIe resizable BAR support.  It's a feature that could, in principle, be supported by nVidia and Intel, but neither actually has support right now.  The only actively functional resizable BAR support in Windows right now is with RX 6000 cards and Ryzen 5000 processors.  If you can manage to get a hold of either, that is.

I expect over the next several months, support will become more and more broad, with AMD, Intel, and nVidia supporting it on all the products capable of doing so by the end of next year.

[colesdav]

Nvidia already claim to have it working and intend to release it soon with a driver update for RTX3000 series GPUs.
They tested it working in Intel and AMD Motherboards.
Shows similar performance uplift.
 

[Thanny]

It will take a BIOS update for every motherboard not based on AMD's 500 series chipsets to make it work.  nVidia can't simply release a driver.

Like I said, it's going to take time for the functionality to work its way outside of the Ryzen 5000/RX 6000 box.

[colesdav]

ASUS for one released the BIOS update for Intel Motherboards to allow Resizeable BAR Support on 1 December 2020. 

https://wccftech.com/asus-enables-resizable-bar-amd-smart-access-memory-support-on-intel-z490-h470-b...

So RX6800/XT RX6900XT should be work on those Intel Motherboards. 

Nvidia just need to launch the drivers. 

[colesdav]

ASRock and MSI also adding Resizeable BAR support to Intel Motherboards: 
https://youtu.be/Xra4KdJZ974?t=961

[pokester]

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@knas wrote:

Amd needs to promote the SAM technique in the media because unfortunately most reviewers do not use AMD processors.It is extremely embarrassing to see games like QUAKE II a game created two decades ago that has more coverage than Amd's SAM.Τhe best defense is offense .

Always friendly

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I don't think I have seen any new reviews since Ryzen 5xxx came out that were not on AMD cpus. The ones with AMD gpus also had SAM benchmarks. Other than the reviews I have seen on Intel CPUs. 

[colesdav]

Thia: 
https://www.techradar.com/sg/news/intel-cpus-could-see-up-to-20-performance-gains-from-amds-smart-me...

[mazi]

There is reportedly support for SAM/BAR even on R9-390 Radeon GPUs, likewise all the Polaris and Vega GPUs. For CPUs also first gen of Ryzen was successfully tested as long as a Mainboard with appropriate BIOS was at hand currently including some B450 and X470 models.
Forum posters claim huge gains especially on older VRAM constraint GPUs on some modern games like this one.
While on some scenarios results remain the same within a margin of errors.

It's just on AMD to give the mainboard manufactures BIOS options to enable the feat. quickly on all Ryzen Chipsets. That would be fine wine reloaded, wondering what a Fury would be capable of that came later than the 390 but with half the VRAM size.

[colesdav]

RE: wondering what a Fury would be capable of that came later than the 390 but with half the VRAM size.

It is the memory bandwidth and the ability to get the correct required data to the GPU on time that matters.
Although games will load VRAM with as much data as possible for given resolution, texture pack setting etc, that does not mean it is needed immediately by the GPU.  

R9 390X     Bandwidth     384.0 GB/s   8GB.
R9 Fury X  Bandwidth     512.0 GB/s    4GB.

I own lots of R9 Fury X, Fury, Nano GPUs. 
They still perform great on games like BF1 DX12 4K Ultra in MultiGPU (2 cards).
The 4GB HBM "limitation" is still not a problem on most games. 
The main problem with the cards is lack of game optimization since RX Vega 56/64 launched. AMD did / do not support the cards enough. 

I have ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VII (Wifi) X470  motherboard with new BIOS available for resizeable BAR support. 
It is PCIe3.0x16  or x8/x8/ or x8/x4/  +  PCIe2.0  x4 for the 3 main GPU slots. 
I need info from ASUS to check and confirm the BIOS flash is not one way only. 

I could then test R9 Fury X on that. 
But who would care if it does improve?
AMD?

I am more interested to see Asus to implement Resizeable Bar support for old Intel Haswell and up boards. 
I use the R9 Fury X on those machines. 
Intel and ASUS will not do that.  

[mazi]

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@colesdav wrote:

I could then test R9 Fury X on that. 
But who would care if it does improve?
AMD?

Since the 390 got such a boost on Cyberpunk2077 with 8GB a Fury with more shader power an less VRAM should even improve better on faster VRAM reloading. But even with simpler games that tackled not the 8GB but 4GB limit there should be plenty of popular titles gainin performance. The marketing story would support the Radeon fine wine mantra for the brand as a whole, that would benefit AMD, although I have doubts ther marketing pros have those lines in their books. For users I could imagine many Radeon GPUs especially on first Zen chipset mainboards that could benefit, there were plenty of Polaris 4GB GPUs sold, that might still be used, especially in current supply/demand situation. The Fury would just be some kind of lighthouse story to make all aware a BIOS update is worth it... at the end its enthusiasts with big stinginess or small pockets only anyways.

[goodplay]

No doubt Nv will make it work with Intel first, certainly no gain(profit) in supporting AMD ? 

[colesdav]

Radeon fine wine =  excuse for terrible drivers at launch and very poor handling of DX11 which loads mostly 1 CPU Core.
So GPUs that ran poorly on DX11 got a performance boost in DX12/Vulkan.

In the case of RX5700XT you might be able to claim AMD FineWine 8 months after GPU launch because the cards stopped blackscreening?

RE: The Fury would just be some kind of lighthouse story to make all aware a BIOS update is worth it... at the end its enthusiasts with big stinginess or small pockets only anyways.  

RE: enthusiasts with big stinginess - those Fury X GPUs were $650 at launch.
RE: small pockets only - No. I continuted to but RX Vega 64/56, RX590, and even RX5700XT for PC builds for gaming.
Driver support and fixes and improvements is important.