AMD Smart Access Memory Tested In 36 Games

During the presentation of new AMD video cards, the company announced support for Smart Access Memory technology. With its help, the CPU can directly access video memory. The first tests showed an increase of up to 15%.

TechSpot conducted a larger study and tested the technology in 36 games.

The test involved a Radeon RX 6800 graphics card paired with a Ryzen R9 5950X processor. The competitor was the GeForce RTX 3070 FE. The results were inconsistent - sometimes Smart Access Memory performed very well, and sometimes it only made it worse.

For example, in Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the inclusion of technology has increased the frame rate by about 20%. The increase in Godfall was 17%, in Borderlands 3 - 16%. However, all three games are optimized for AMD hardware.

In other titles, problems started. Often, enabling Smart Access Memory had almost no effect on the frame rate, and in some cases, fps was even lower than without the technology. For example, in Monster Hunter World, the frame rate dropped by 4%, and in Apex Legends - by 10%.

According to TechSpot, technology can't just be turned on in any game. The portal recommends that you first run the benchmark built into the game, or look at the frame rate so that you don't see a reduced fps when activated.

Perhaps the situation will change over time and Smart Access Memory will work better. The technology should work not only with AMD, but with Intel and NVIDIA, so developers will pay more attention to it.