To start, I won April's Red Team Sweepstakes. So, I am a very happy owner of an RX 7900 XT.
My current PC accepted the new card with no problems, but it's a 5-year-old build with a Ryzen 7 2700X. The new Ryzen CPUs are more than twice as fast as my 2000 generation, so I was nervous that the new graphics card would be hamstrug by the rest of the system. Here are my specs:
- CPU: Ryzen 7 2700X
- Motherboard: MSI X470 Gaming Pro Carbon
- RAM: 32GB (4x8GB) DDR4-3200 - G.Skill Ripjaws V
- GPU: ASUS TUF Gaming RX 7900 XT OC Edition 20GB
- PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G2 (750W, 80+ Gold)
- Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1TB (also two Hitachi storage drives and a 1TB Sandisk SSD)
- Case: Cooler Master MasterCase MC500P
- Monitor: Crossover 324K 32" UHD
Given my monitor, I'm gaming at 4K and testing with maxed-out settings.
(SPOILER ALERT: Smart Access Memory is working like a charm, and I am now getting fantastic performance.)
I knew that Smart Access Memory could give newer AMD systems a big boost, but it was introduced long after I built my PC. I assumed that it wasn't compatible with my system.
When I first installed the card, I was happy and sad at the same time - The 7900XT was a massive improvement over the budget-friendly GTX 1060 I was running, but my system was bottlenecked at the CPU. I booted up Crysis 3 since I knew it would be CPU heavy. I experienced heavy stuttering, especially in the rainy first level. Then I tried Borderlands 3. The stuttering made the game unplayable. Every second or two, the game would freeze, sometimes for a full second. Between each stutter, it would run smoothly as butter, which is typical of a CPU bottleneck.
I thought I was going to have to upgrade my CPU, motherboard, and RAM before I could use the RX 7900 XT to its full potential. But then I found out that MSI created a BIOS update for my motherboard. The description read, "Update to Agesa ComboAm4v2PI 1.2.0.A." AGESA versions past v2 1.1.0.0 generally include Smart Access Memory support. I flashed my BIOS, made sure the system was working with the update, and turned the S.A.M. settings on.
Conclusion: Smart Access Memory killed the stuttering. The system is now max-ing out every game I have at 4K.
If you have an X470, X570, B450, or B550 motherboard and want to run a new high-end Radeon card: check to see if there is a motherboard BIOS update available with AGESA v2 1.1.0.0 or newer. If your system supports Smart Access Memory, you can run that new card just fine.
I am a flight simulator nerd, so the next upgrade to my system is a VR headset. I'm looking at an HP Reverb G2. I can post another update when I make that upgrade.
(Some more backstory: The sweepstakes win was an incredible gift - Since my wife is in grad school and we'd like to have kids and buy a house, I thought it was going to be a long time before I could make a serious upgrade to my PC. I was rocking the GTX 1060 for a long time, so this is a HUGE upgrade.) Thanks, Red Team for holding the sweepstakes.
Pics of the system below:
