AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT gets performance boost on Intel Z490 with Resizable BAR

Earlier this week we wrote that ASUS rolled out BIOS updates that add Resizable BAR support for Intel Z490 motherboards. This feature was introduced with the Radeon RX 6800 launch from AMD under the Smart Access Memory name but the technology is not unique to AMD as it's part of the PCI Express specification.

So is this feature capable of boosting performance on the Intel platform? VideoCardz spotted some benchmarks over at Japanese tech site ASCII. The site tested the Radeon RX 6800 XT on the ASUS ROG Maximus XII EXTREME motherboard with the newly released BIOS version 1002:

The editor is using Intel Core i9-10900K processors and Radeon RX 6800 XT reference model with the feature enabled and then disabled to see if there are any improvements. It is worth noting that SAM does not always bring a noticeable performance boost, even on the Ryzen 5000/Radeon 6000 platform. That said, the editor only tested the games where SAM is proven to provide such a boost: Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Rainbow Six Siege.

The biggest gains are seen in minimum framerates, there were some pretty amazing performance gains in that area. Hopefully, NVIDIA will follow suit soon.