AMD RX 6700 XT Review

The RX 6700 XT also offers support for AMD's Smart Access Memory (SAM), which is essentially AMD's implementation for resizable BAR, a PCIe feature that's been around for a few years, but has only just started seeing mainstream adoption.

According to AMD, a Ryzen 3000/5000 CPU is required to use SAM, as is a 500-series motherboard. However, my ASUS ROG Maximus XII Hero offers support for resizable BAR on the Z490 platform, so I put it to the test with the RX 6700 XT. To be clear, this hardware combination isn't officially supported by AMD, so the results may vary when compared to a Ryzen-based system, but we can still take a look.

Re-testing the twelve games in our test suite at 1440p, we found performance of the RX 6700 XT increased by up to 6% with SAM enabled, and the only game where performance degraded was in Watch Dogs: Legion, and that was only a difference of a single frame. Gears 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla all saw 5% improvements, though three of our games did not see any benefit at all.

Overall, average performance of the RX 6700 XT improved by 2% with SAM enabled. It's hardly a significant difference and certainly isn't enough to change our conclusion, but it is something.

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