Along with the announcement of Radeon RX 6900, Radeon RX 6800 XT and Radeon RX 6800 graphics cards late last year, AMD introduced Smart Access Memory technology. It allows the CPU to engage the entire video memory array of a video card at once instead of accessing only its part with up to 256 MB. This allows some games to get up to a 16% performance boost.
At the time of announcement, the technology required the user to have the latest Ryzen 5000 series processor, Radeon RX 6000 series graphics card and AMD 500 series motherboard. Today the company introduced the Radeon RX 6700 XT graphics card, and at the same time announced that it is extending Smart Access Memory support to Ryzen 3000 series processors. Users still need to have a motherboard with AMD B550 or X570 chipset, so owners of boards on older AMD B450 and X470 chipsets are out of luck. Also, Smart Access Memory support does not apply to Ryzen 5 3400G and Ryzen 3 3200G hybrid processors. Unlike AMD's latest line of Zen 3 processors, the Ryzen 3000 models on the Zen 2 architecture can easily be found on sale and often at a significant discount. The single-core performance of these processors is not as great as the new chips, but Smart Access Memory technology will close the gap between the two. To use Smart Access Memory in addition to the Ryzen 3000-series processor and AMD 500-series chipset motherboard, you also need to have a Radeon RX 6000-series graphics card. Unfortunately, the last component in the current realities is very difficult to find on sale at an adequate price.
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