Display Smart Access Memory Status Info On Home Page of Adreneline?

It would be nice to see the status info of SAM and 4GDecoder information on the Home Page of the drivers.
Is that something in the works? I'm not sure in what format would work best though.
For Example:
SAM: Enabled/Disabled
Video Card: Radeon XXXX
Motherboard Compatible: Yes/No (could include chipset)
CPU Compatible: Yes/No (could include what CPU)

Or, a button that says “Check Sam Status”.
Once completed a pop up screen appears with the aforementioned information.

 

Spoiler: GPUz now shows "Resizable BAR" as Enabled/Disabled:

 

There is no need until we get a wide range of systems actually supporting the feature.

 

No wonder Radeon has a horrible reputation. If that is the reason why we haven't seen it yet.
Thanks for clarifying why that is. /s

To think it would make sense to support this new feature by, you know, showing that it's working or not. Because of some flawed, inaccurate premise is laughable to say the least.

Oh, I know let's delegate the responsibility to gpuz. But the real question we should ask ourselves is...why is someone else able to do it and not RTG? Did the author of gpuz deny doing it because he felt there weren't enough people?

Apparently not....

 

RTG have bigger issues to begin with than showing is the resizable bar supported or not. While every major engine and more and more games supporting dlss i think they should focus on that instead if they want to stay relevant. Thats why they have horrible reputation.

 

This premise is irrelevant do to the fact we are discussing an existing feature, SAM. One in which we had no way of knowing it was "on" unless you used device manager. Recently, you can use gpuz. Gpuz shows us it can be done. There is absolutely no reasonable excuse to not include a status of the SAM in the GUI of the driver.

It is all about fit and polish of SAM. Not about a none existing feature. That has more to do with console gaming development.

 

I have a question for this feature i can enable the Smart acess Memory on Mobo Asus A320m-Gaming with Rysen 1600AF and a Graphic Card AMD Sapphire RX 570 4GB OC Nitro Plus on Windows 10 x64?? is my question? if yes wath procedure to make work this feature the step by step to activate this?

 

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/smart-access-memory

You can checkout the link above. It will show you to make sure you enable Above 4G Decoder and Re-Sizable Bar Support for the aforementioned hardware above.

One of the major issues of this is communication. Right now it's nebulous as to SAM working on other AMD hardware like the previous generation of RDNA 1, for example. As stated above it's not validated. Which in essences
means it wasn't checked or proven accurate. Echos of the internet say that it does work with older hardware. How old? Remains the question.

Another topic of ambiguity is that it's not clear if SAM is any different then Resizable Bar (which is what you are enabling in the bios). It's been reported that Sam is more then resizable bar. So when people claim they see GPUz showing SAM support on older unsupported HW they are in essence saying they have Resizable bar enabled. The gist has been that older gpus would need a firmware update. But that's still unconfirmed...as there is no detection system setup in the drivers to either confirm or deny it.

So, is GPUz actually working correctly for Radeon Users showing SAM support, Resizable bar support, both? More questions and no answers. Which is why I started this thread inquiring about actual SAM support notification in the GUI of the drivers.

Perhaps an option telling the user they simply have Resizable bar enabled but no SAM support (when applicable...again if the aforementioned difference is true). That SAM is indeed more robust then just Resizable Bar. Which would then explain why a firmware update for older gpus is required.

Who knows, it's an enigma stuffed in a puzzle box if you ask me.

 

I think SAM is the AMD moniker for Resizable BAR, much how FreeSync is the moniker for VRR.

 

Intel 10/11gen, ryzen 3000/5000, radeon rx6000 and nvidia rtx3000 series only.

 

It very well could be. However, due to the absence of Sam notification support in the drivers it is hard to say.

It is confusing to tell someone that in order to enable Sam you must enable resizable bar in the Bios. So which is it? As of right now the only application that gives you any notification is gpu-z (imo is catering towards nvidia). Which is telling you it's called resizable bar, not Sam. The implications is that you must be SAM compliant not resizable bar compliant. In order to get the performance benefit. Which is the crux of the confusion. To further add, it has been shown that a user can enable above 4g and resizable bar support without the aforementioned video card requirements.

AMD needs to clarify this. And it can only be done with driver notification support.

Furthermore. Amd should clarify what hardware is truly SAM supported. Differentiate the difference between resizable bar and SAM compliance. So it is clear to the community what actions maybe required. By providing the necessary firmware updates for our video cards. Or, just admit it is resizable bar under a different name.

 

uh.... no.

 

Ah...yes.
Yes, AMD can validate the use of SAM through the drivers. To which, can differentiate it with hardware that is listed as " Not Validated". However, is still labeled as "Resizable Bar supported". Through applications like GPUz.
Because using the term "Not Validated" is simply the absence of testing. Therefore, it's prudent to clarify the presence of SAM so that it is understood the exact conditions which need to be met.

One of those conditions is indeed the ability to get some sort of SAM notification in the GUI of the drivers when those conditions are met.

As it stands now, it is my opinion that those conditions are ambiguous. Do to this found on AMD's website:

Because of this it should be clear what conditions need to be met in order to "validate" any other graphics solutions.

 

I agree there needs to be a method to retrieve a true status for SAM and Resizable BAR, but I wonder if AMD would actually code a proper check for these regardless of hardware, or just use a GPU whitelist and then check (unless they clearly specify otherwise, I imagine it'll be a GPU whitelist).

I wonder if there's a way to distinguish SAM support from Resizable BAR on Linux.

 

its called gpu-z

 

It's the same thing.
Though RADV calls it SAM too and you can force it on per application base, even if there is just the Above 4G Decoding option in bios without SAM/CAM (or force it off if you have it enabled in bios). As usual, it also works much better in this regard than AMD's amdvlk driver (at least better than amdvlk on Linux, which gives me issues with even just Above 4G Decoding in several titles, and also CAM doesn't improve this).

 

What is interesting is that this person says that SAM is not working through benchmark testing. Even though he has it on with his 6700xt. He was attempting to do a comparison with the 6700xt vs 5700xt.
In a case like this some sort of indicator would have shed some light that SAM isn't working.

Here is another example as to why it's important to have some sort of display/indicator that SAM is working. Even though you made sure you've turned it on. Worst case scenario is that SAM is "turned on" but it's working.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ncjonn/amd_should_add_a_setting_indicating_if_sam/

Looks like the word is getting out there.

 

https://twitter.com/GPUOpen/status/1390580586490830848

More insight we need the ability for the driver gui to tell us when sam is enabled.