Test Setup
Please read our GPU Test Bench and Benchmarking Refresher for an explanation on our test system, procedures and goals. More information on our GPU testing can be found here. Check out our KIT page where you can see all the components in our test system configuration for reviewing video cards.
All data is brand new and refreshed using the GeForce 457.30 driver, new Windows version, and new motherboard BIOS. Radeon data is using the AMD provided press driver for RX 6000 series GPUs.
Smart Access Memory Disabled
The Smart Access Memory question. We do not have this feature enabled on our test bench for today’s results. Firstly, we are using a Ryzen 7 3700X (Zen 2) CPU, therefore we do not have all of the combo needed to make the feature work, even though we have installed the appropriate BIOS. This new BIOS uses the new AGESA V2 P1 1.1.0.0 Patch C code, which is the latest.
Smart Access Memory is a feature that is disabled by default in the motherboard currently. Our methodology in testing requires we test at default motherboard configuration, and default driver configuration. We do not tweak or change anything in the motherboard for video card testing. We rely on stock, default, motherboard “Optimized BIOS” settings with DOCP enabled. We touch nothing else, as a rule. In addition, we touch nothing of the driver settings either, simply installing the driver, and running our benchmarks. We do not touch or tweak or manipulate driver settings as a rule.
Therefore, with our methodology in place, that means Smart Access Memory would be disabled by default anyway, even if we did have a Zen 3 CPU in place, which we do not. We feel that for right now, a Zen 2 CPU is more real-world. More people have Zen 2 CPUs installed right now than Zen 3 CPUs. Therefore we are testing with a more real-world setup that you can compare your results to ours on.
In the future, when the Resizable BAR option is turned ON by default in motherboards, we will simply leave it on as the default setting if that’s the default setting. The same will go for AMD, and NVIDIA GPUs.
But for right now, we are testing with it disabled simply by the fact we are using a Zen 2 CPU, and the fact we don’t manipulate BIOS settings.
We do plan to look at the feature in the future though and test performance ON versus OFF, which should be interesting.