AMD's Smart Access Memory comes to Ryzen 3000 CPUs like the Ryzen 5 3600 as NVIDIA starts its own Resize BAR rollout: could help push the RX 6700 XT past the GeForce RTX 3070

Shortly after announcing the launch of its RX 6700 XT graphics card, AMD announced that SAM (smart access memory) would be making its way over to older Ryzen 3000 processors. This means that owners of RDNA2 cards like the RX 6800 XT won't need the latest Ryzen 5000 series processors to leverage the tech and enable higher framerates in SAM-supported games. 

Certain titles like Assassin's Creed: Valhalla see immense gains when SAM is enabled: framerates increased by almost 10 percent on the RX 6800 XT, which, in some cases, is higher than the gains possible from overclocking. 

It's interesting to note that AMD's wider SAM support was announced shortly after NVIDIA unveiled the GeForce RTX 3060 and Resizable BAR. Resizable BAR and SAM are fundamentally the same tech. However, NVIDIA's implementation is supported by a much wider range of chipsets and CPUs, though benchmarks seem to indicate that performance improvements are more muted on NVIDIA cards when Resizable BAR is enabled. 

The RX 6700 XT already holds a considerable lead over the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and regularly bests the RTX 3070: SAM could help secure that lead.