AMD just released new Radeon graphics drivers, which unlock some extra performance for anyone still using an older RX 5000 Series graphics card.
As Ars Technica reports, the Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.9.1 drivers add support for AMD Smart Access Memory (SAM) on Radeon RX 5000 Series graphics cards. There are a few caveats, but with the right hardware it means you could be enjoying up to a 15% performance improvement when playing games using these older cards.
Now for the caveats: In order to take advantage of SAM, you need to be running a motherboard that supports it, which probably requires updating the BIOS before enabling it in the BIOS settings. Both 400 and 500 series motherboards offer support. On top of that you’ll also need to be running either an Intel 10th or 11th-generation processor, or a Ryzen 3000 or 5000-series processor.
Until now, SAM was restricted to AMD’s Radeon RX 6000 Series graphics cards. It removes the 256MB GPU video memory restriction which required large assets to be broken up into smaller chunks before they could be transferred. The subsequent performance gain can be up to 20% depending on the game, but for the RX 5000 graphics cards the upper limit is a 15% improvement, with many games seeing a much smaller boost. Even so, if you have compatible hardware you might as well take advantage of the extra performance on offer from updating your system.
