ASUS brings Resizable BAR support to Intel 400-series motherboards – Smart Access Memory on Intel?

Smart Access Memory (SAM) technology is one of AMD’s latest technological advancements for PC gamers on Windows, optimising their new Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs to deliver increased performance levels across a variety of workloads. This technology utilises optional PCIe features like Resizable Bar to give CPUs more direct access to GPU memory, with AMD offering the hardware and software validation necessary to ensure that this feature enables increased gaming performance. 
  
While Smart Access Memory is marketed as an AMD feature, it can function on Intel platforms, with ASUS adding Resizable BAR support to their Z490, H470 and B460 motherboard platforms with new BETA BIOS releases. As can be seen in the slide below, which comes via ASUS DE’s Chris Wefers, the benefits of Smart Access Memory can be seen on Intel-based systems. ASUS lists a 13.37% increase in Forza Horizon 4 performance on a Radeon RX 6800 XT. 

In time, Nvidia is expected to enable a similar feature on their Ampere series graphics cards. This will make Smart Access Memory a technology which all PC gamers can take advantage of. 

AMD was able to create Smart Access Memory because of their control over Radeon hardware, CPUs, motherboards and all of the software that sits in-between. Radeon drivers needed to utilise this increased memory access to boost performance and to ensure that this new feature didn’t create new bugs or result in negative performance consequences. In addition to this, AMD needed to enable support for this feature onto motherboards, developing firmware updates to utilise the feature. 

While ASUS has confirmed that Smart Access Memory can work on Intel motherboards, it will take time for this support to exit beta and release across a wider range of non-AMD motherboards. That said, the fact that ASUS has already released BETA BIOS updates for some boards is a good sign that Resizable BAR support can be implemented with ease across a wide range of motherboards.