A fast trip to the BIOS can unlock better gaming performance with the proper AMD hardware.
With AMD’s Smart Access Memory, you can pair a Radeon RX 6000 series GPU with a Ryzen processor to get even better gaming performance—in some cases, significantly so.
We’ll go through the hardware requirements before showing you how to enable Smart Access memory. Following that, we’ll show you how to activate SAM in your BIOS. Finally, we’ll show you how to verify that it’s functioning. Let’s get to work! (Also, check out our articles on Smart Access Memory and the Nvidia-equivalent Resizable BAR.)
Hardware requirements for Smart Access Memory
- BIOS (AGESA 1.1.0.0 or latest)
- AMD Radeon Software (20.11.2 or latest)
- AMD Radeon RX 6000 GPUs (6800, 6800XT, and so forth)
- Select AMD Ryzen 3000 CPUs (excluding 3200G and 3400G)
- AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPUs (5600x, 5800x, and so on)
- AMD 500 series motherboard (X570, B550, etc.)
ACCORDING TO THE SUGGESTED HARDWARE ABOVE, the RX 6000 series GPUs and Ryzen 5000 series CPUs will produce the best results. AMD has added a few 3000 series CPUs to the mix, but a 500 series motherboard is still required.
Nvidia’s version of Resizable BAR support is available if you have an Nvidia GPU or an Intel CPU. We will reflect any future hardware compatibility guidelines in this article.
Enable Smart Access Memory in the BIOS
Turning on Smart Access Memory takes only a few minutes if you have all of the required hardware, albeit it does necessitate going into your motherboard BIOS. Here’s how you can do it:
- Enter the BIOS of your motherboard by using Del or F2 keys (see your motherboard documentation for details)
- Go to the advanced settings menu.
- Enter PCIe Subsystem settings if applicable, such as on Asus motherboards, and enable the following:
- Above 4G Decoding
- Re-Size BAR Support (set to Auto can also work)
- Go to your Boot menu and turn off CSM (Compatibility Support Module)
- Save your changes, exit BIOS, and restart Windows.
You will activate smart Access Memory if you follow the easy instructions above. The most important tasks are to enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR support.” You’ll also want to make sure to switch off CSM.
How to check if the Smart Access Memory is enabled?
Using the most recent version of AMD Radeon Software, we can now verify that Smart Access Memory is enabled. Open the Tuning panel by going to the Performance tab. “Smart Access Memory” can be found on this page.
You can either enable or disable the option here. It will serve as confirmation that your visit to the BIOS was a success. Have fun experimenting with the enhanced game performance!
