AMD Confirms Smart Access Memory is Coming to Ryzen 3000 CPUs

Without a doubt, the recent official launch of the Radeon RX 6700 XT stole most of the highlights from the AMD ‘Where Gaming Begins: Episode 3’ event. However, during the reveal, it shouldn’t be ignored that Team Red also made another pretty significant announcement. Namely, that Smart Access Memory support (SAM) has arrived for Ryzen 3000 processors!

AMD Ryzen 3000 – SAM Compatibility!

So, what is Smart Access Memory? Well, the short version is that it allows the CPU to communicate far more efficiently with your graphics card. And, as the name might suggest, better utilize your VRAM to make games run faster. Admittedly, the performance boost generally tends to fall between 5-15%, but with this support now added to Ryzen 3000 CPUs (excluding the 3200G and 3400G), it’s a free performance boost and, quite frankly, who can argue with that?!

A Little Caveat

We should note that while AMD has confirmed support for Ryzen 3000 processors, they did not go as far as to say just what levels of increased performance users can expect. Logically, we would presume that it’ll be lower than that seen on the Zen 3 Ryzen 5000 CPUs. Additionally, it has been confirmed that this support will only be available on 400-series+ motherboards. As above though, if you do own a Ryzen 3000 CPU, and presuming you have a suitable motherboard, this technology should now (or very shortly) be available to you. As such, you might just want to keep an eye open for a new BIOS update!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!