ASUS is the first manufacturer to bring Resizable BAR (AMD Smart Access Memory) to the Intel platform. This technology allows motherboard manufacturers to use both 10th generation Intel CPUs and AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards to deliver higher performance in games and applications.
Finally, AMD Smart Access Memory support comes to Intel-based ASUS motherboards. SAM technology existed for years in the official PCIe specifications, but the technology became the focus of motherboard manufacturers, NVIDIA and Intel after AMD found a way to increase performance in their Ryzen/Radeon ecosystem.
ASUS recently released new firmware for several Z490 motherboards that allowed for Resizable BAR (Base Address Register) support. The evidence was found in the BIOS configuration listing ‘Above 4G Decoding’ and ‘Resizable BAR support’ for the Maximus XII APEX motherboard based on the Intel Z490 chipset.
This information was confirmed by an ASUS representative who says that the Beta BIOS is now available to owners of the ASUS Z490, H470, and B460 boards. The news comes even before the official support from NVIDIA for its latest GeForce RTX 30 graphics cards. Meanwhile, the AMD Radeon RX 6000 Series GPUs should already be able to take advantage of the new feature.
According to the ASUS shared slide, a 13.37% performance increase is expected in Forza Horizon 4, (tested on a system featuring a Core i7-10700K and a Radeon RX 6800 XT).
At this rate, AMD will go from being the first to announce Smart Access Memory, to the last to implement it.
