New AMD Radeon™ Software Adrenalin 21.9.1 adds Smart Access Memory on Radeon™ RX 5000 Series Graphics

[hysel]

Summary

AMD has just released the Radeon™ Software Adrenalin version 21.9.1 which adds, among other fixes and enhancement, support for Smart Access Memory on Radeon™ RX 5000 Series Graphics

 

I ran some basic benchmarks using my machine (AMD 5600x on x570 Motherboard and Radeon 5700XT) and there is definitely some improvement.

 

You still need a motherboard that supports this feature (SAM) 

 

Here are my results in 3Dmark, Top two scores are using this driver version and other two are using the previous one (21.8.2)

 

No other changes are made to the system

 

 

Enabling this feature is done via the Adrenalin software:

 

 

I think that getting some extra performance by just installing a new driver is excellent but again, you should make sure you are running the latest BIOS on a motherboard that supports this feature (SAM)

 

Sources

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/release-notes/rn-rad-win-21-9-

[RejZoR]

ReBAR on NVIDIA is terrible. I had more issues with it than benefits. And I'm running X570 and RTX 3080. Some games are just unplayable with it.

[GuiltySpark_]

5 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

ReBAR on NVIDIA is terrible. I had more issues with it than benefits. And I'm running X570 and RTX 3080. Some games are just unplayable with it.

Honesty I forgot I enabled it on my 3090. Never noticed a thing with any game. 

[hysel]

6 minutes ago, rickeo said:

Honesty I forgot I enabled it on my 3090. Never noticed a thing with any game. 

well, you do have 3090 so you are already in Plaid mode  

 

[Pixelfie]

Is it worth it for 5500 XT? I need a BIOS update to enable it but I'm not updating if I won't notice any difference

[RejZoR]

39 minutes ago, rickeo said:

Honesty I forgot I enabled it on my 3090. Never noticed a thing with any game. 

With NVIDIA, in best case scenario it basically does nothing. In worst case scenario, it creates horrid stuttering and literal half a second pauses. Borderlands 3 is one of the worst offenders, but I suspect Frostbit Engine (basically all Battlefield games) don't work well with it either.

[Doobeedoo]

That's nice.

[hysel]

13 minutes ago, Pixelfie said:

Is it worth it for 5500 XT? I need a BIOS update to enable it but I'm not updating if I won't notice any difference

You may notice even better improvement...

[StDragon]

I would imagine this would yield better results for Microsoft Flight Sim.

[AlTech]

That's great that AMD ended up enabling this on RX 5000 series but one has to wonder why this wasn't enabled for that series in the first instance alongside RX 6000 series

[porina]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

ReBAR on NVIDIA is terrible. I had more issues with it than benefits. And I'm running X570 and RTX 3080. Some games are just unplayable with it.

Is this just something you have the misfortune to encounter, or is it widespread? We all know there can be weird interactions between hardware, drivers, software. I only have one game on their whitelist (Watch Dogs Legion) and have no noticed any problem with that. I haven't done a on/off test of it either, and now I kinda want to try...

 

23 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

That's great that AMD ended up enabling this on RX 5000 series but one has to wonder why this wasn't enabled for that series in the first instance alongside RX 6000 series

This isn't as simple as flipping a switch in software. They probably have to test/update/verify the driver chain to make sure it works before they release it to the wild. 

[tim0901]

1 hour ago, porina said:

Is this just something you have the misfortune to encounter, or is it widespread? We all know there can be weird interactions between hardware, drivers, software. I only have one game on their whitelist (Watch Dogs Legion) and have no noticed any problem with that. I haven't done a on/off test of it either, and now I kinda want to try...

Yeah this is the first I've heard of anyone having problems with the technology.

 

If the problem were truly widespread and commonplace I'd have expected there to be at least some level of coverage on it.

[AnonymousGuy]

4 hours ago, tim0901 said:

Yeah this is the first I've heard of anyone having problems with the technology.

 

If the problem were truly widespread and commonplace I'd have expected there to be at least some level of coverage on it.

Same.  There's so many ways Windows can shit itself that I don't trust any GPU problem reports unless they say "I did a fresh install".

[ouroesa]

9 hours ago, hysel said:

I ran some basic benchmarks using my machine (AMD 5600x on x570 Motherboard and Radeon 5700XT) and there is definitely some improvement.

Less than 0.5% improvement - I would chuck this in the 'within margin of error' bin and look for other tests to judge this. 

I'm far more interested in real world performance and whether it has similar issues to NVidia ReBAR.

 

Seems like early testing would indicate decent improvements in some titles but this was done 9+ months ago and can't currently find anything decent on this driver release.