The Radeon RX 6900/6950 XT Owners Thread.

[Purgatory]

With all due respect, you have no idea what you are talking about mate.

You are welcome to think what you like however, so go right ahead.

Take it elsewhere, but please don't come in here with your usual bait and troll posts in the 6900 XT owners thread.

Its not what I think.. It's a fact. You are just making things up now.

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-smart-access-memory

AMD's Smart Access Memory is essentially "resizable Base Address Register (BAR) support" with a fancy name. The technology actually came along with PCIe 3.0, and AMD isn't alone in offering this feature. In early 2021, NVIDIA added resizable BAR support to its RTX 30-series GPUs through a driver update.

https://www.techarp.com/computer/guide-smart-access-memory/

Smart Access Memory : PCIe Resizable BAR for AMD!
Smart Access Memory is AMD’s marketing term for their implementation of the PCI Express Resizable BAR (Base Address Registers) capability.

AMD FreeSync again is a marketing name for another industry specification VESA's Adaptive-Sync.

You see now ? How AMD renames industry standards that are royalty free to their marketing names now ?

Please stop making stuff up now..

 

[LtMatt]

Its not what I think.. It's a fact. You are just making things up now.

I don't need to make anything up, there's a reason why Rebar for some vendors is hit and miss. If you can't work that means there is other optimisation going on, that's on you.

I bet you don't even have access to use SAM, you just use Bar with a Intel/Nvidia system and draw your conclusion from that. And to say it's only enabled for and provides benefit on a few AMD sponsored titles is just laughable.

Honestly, you really have no idea yourself, yet you come in here pretending to know the world by posting third party links talking about ReBar and look to belittle me in every post you send my way.

You are going on ignore, since all I read from you towards me in various threads on this forum are constant attacks on my character. I've had enough of you and your constant bait/troll posts Purgatory.

Hope you are now happy, happy new year to you too.

 

[Purgatory]

I don't need to make anything up, there's a reason why Rebar for some vendors is hit and miss. If you can't work that means there is other optimisation going on, that's on you.

I bet you don't even have access to use SAM, you just use Bar with a Intel/Nvidia system and draw your conclusion from that. And to say SAM only provides benefit on a few AMD sponsored titles is just laughable.

Honestly, you really have no idea yourself, yet you come in here pretending to know the world by posting third party links talking about ReBar and look to belittle me in every post you send my way.

You are going on ignore, since all I read from you towards me in various threads on this forum are constant attacks on my character. I've had enough of you and your constant bait/troll posts Purgatory.

Hope you are now happy, happy new year to you too.

I use an AMD 5950x system... also as stated AMD has added better support so far in their AMD sponsored games as can be seen from benchmarks with it on and off (REBAR/SAM) so far not many games really make great use of it and no application for work shows any benefit for it so far on a consumer desktop, it will take time for REBAR support to come to most game engines and work applications to show full benefits, the server enviroment makes great use out of it but again that took many years before it took off too, same will happen with consumer desktops and the software running on them with supported hardware, also the os will need better support for it, so far it's still not great for consumer computers because of the lack of support and good support for it. In time things will change.

I don't understand why you are so defensive, I stated facts with links to the facts, you just want to turn a fact you don't like into a argument for no reason, because you have no facts to back it up and then start throwing your dummy out of the pram.

Geeze really it has become so petty discussing anything with you... I honestly think you are causing more damage to AMD's image than anyone on these forums and you work for them.. Anyways I give up replying to your "facts"..

Enjoy your new year.

 

[LtMatt]

I use an AMD 5950x system... also as stated AMD has added better support so far in their AMD sponsored games as can be seen from benchmarks with it on and off (REBAR/SAM) so far not many games really make great use of it and no application for work shows any benefit for it so far on a consumer desktop, it will take time for REBAR support to come to most game engines and work applications to show full benefits, the server enviroment makes great use out of it but again that took many years before it took off too, same will happen with consumer desktops and the software running on them with supported hardware, also the os will need better support for it, so far it's still not great for consumer computers because of the lack of support and good support for it. In time things will change.

I don't understand why you are so defensive, I stated facts with links to the facts, you just want to turn a fact you don't like into a argument for no reason, because you have no facts to back it up and then start throwing your dummy out of the pram.

Geeze really it has become so petty discussing anything with you... I honestly think you are causing more damage to AMD's image than anyone on these forums and you work for them.. Anyways I give up replying to your "facts"..

Enjoy your new year.

I'm so 'defensive' because of your posting style. Petty indeed, don't use the term 'mate' then start attacking me in your posts. Don't expect to have a discussion with me if that's how you frame your posts. Sorry If you don't like getting called out for it, but maybe you need to work on your people skills a bit and then you wouldn't' come across the way you do. Hard to want to debate anyone when their motive is just an attack or an attempt to belittle.

You can post as many third party links as you want, but at the end of the day you are using ReBar and not SAM since you don't own an AMD GPU, do you? Do you see a toggle for SAM in Radeon Software? If you don't, you are using ReBar. No special sauce with ReBar, not done by AMD anyway. This is why you don't know what you are talking about so please stop pretending to know different since you are not using SAM. Yes the technology is fundamentally the same, I never said it wasn't.

SAM should always be enabled for AMD + AMD systems. Some vendors only enable it for a handful of games, as it can hurt their performance. That's what the benchmarks show. SAM is optimised to improve performance in many games, not just a few AMD sponsored ones. You wouldn't claim this if you actually used SAM, since you'd understand why it is better than ReBar used by other vendors currently and why it improves performance in more than just a few games. And that is why SAM is better than ReBar, currently.

 

[Purgatory]

No special sauce with ReBar, not done by AMD anyway.

So what is the special sauce with SAM compared to ReBar?

This is what others have asked also above but were not answered.


I will explain the "special sauce" Nvidia did with ReBar they basically stated it is enabled with games that benefit and disabled with games that don't benefit, this all done at the driver level.

As can be seen here :- https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support/


Also here is what AMD say about SAM.. Basically it is ReBar and they show how to enable it in the motherboard settings stating "Enable “Above 4G Decoding” and “Re-Size BAR Support”.

https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/smart-access-memory

There is no mention of any "special sauce".

 

[nvidiamd]

If we judge the performance it looks like it does a little more on AMD, if it was the same thing (flipping the same switch ) then both cards will have the same performance. It can be some optimization in the AMD driver or the way Navi is built makes it to work better when ReBar is enabled.

I will explain the "special sauce" Nvidia did with ReBar they basically stated it is enabled with games that benefit and disabled with games that don't benefit, this all done at the driver level.

As can be seen here :- https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/news/geforce-rtx-30-series-resizable-bar-support/

That's what i thought too but then you have games like Halo Infinite where some people used Nvidia Inspector to turn on ReBar (because that was "the right way to do it" ) and told us there is a performance increase with it enabled.

 

[Nexus18]

^^

Not to mention that AMD also see performance drop in certain games too, at least according to HU testing.



At first I liked the thought of nvidia doing the testing before just whitelisting it across the board but on my setup it makes a nice improvement across a few games where they have it disabled. At least we have control on both brands to enable and disable it as we please as there does seem to be mixed results, more so for nvidia.

 

[Joxeon]

^^

Not to mention that AMD also see performance drop in certain games too, at least according to HU testing.



At first I liked the thought of nvidia doing the testing before just whitelisting it across the board but on my setup it makes a nice improvement across a few games where they have it disabled. At least we have control on both brands to enable and disable it as we please as there does seem to be mixed results, more so for nvidia.

Strange how AC Valhalla gives a 20% boost yet Odyssey 0% even though they are built on the same game engine.

 

[Nexus18]

Strange how AC Valhalla gives a 20% boost yet Odyssey 0% even though they are built on the same game engine.

Only reasoning I can think of is perhaps game developers also have to do some tweaks on their end for sam/rebar to work well? i.e. the ones were there is no benefit or it's worse of are older games before rebar/sam was added as a "feature"

 

[uksoldierboy]

I just leave resizeable bar on, seems to help more than it hinders.
Matt quick question, do you have RDR2 installed? I'm getting some crazy vram usage (If Radeon metrics is to be believed)
Ultra everything, water on 3/4, 1440p, no triple buffering, all advanced settings maxed, tress tess on. Vulkan.

Basically I've started to notice that while playing over a period of time, normally 1-2 hours, the vram usage continually climbs, until it actually apparently using all 16gb on the card, its never crashed or shown any of the obvious signs of hitting the vram limit, until last night when I had my first crash since release with a dx ffffffff error.

 

[LtMatt]

Strange how AC Valhalla gives a 20% boost yet Odyssey 0% even though they are built on the same game engine.

Fair question. Just remember HUB tested that when the 6800 launched.

Motherboard BIOS and plenty of driver updates have been released since then but they've never retested it (SAM performance in general over multiple games).

I just leave resizeable bar on, seems to help more than it hinders.
Matt quick question, do you have RDR2 installed? I'm getting some crazy vram usage (If Radeon metrics is to be believed)
Ultra everything, water on 3/4, 1440p, no triple buffering, all advanced settings maxed, tress tess on. Vulkan.

Basically I've started to notice that while playing over a period of time, normally 1-2 hours, the vram usage continually climbs, until it actually apparently using all 16gb on the card, its never crashed or shown any of the obvious signs of hitting the vram limit, until last night when I had my first crash since release with a dx ffffffff error.

I have it mate but not installed. I'll download it and give it a go, as I can't remember what the vram usage was like to be honest but I don't recall it being excessively high from memory (no pun intended).

When I do test it, I'll try SAM on and off too.

 

[uksoldierboy]

Cheers bud much appreciated.

 

[RSR]

That information is not publicly available, but there’s a reason why ReBar is hit and miss with some vendors. But at the core they are the same technology, don't believe I've ever said any different.

Lets be honest, that's not a really convincing argument. All I wanted was a white paper on it, like most vendors do, so I could have a read through it as I like to know how things work.

 

[LtMatt]

Lets be honest, that's not a really convincing argument. All I wanted was a white paper on it, like most vendors do, so I could have a read through it as I like to know how things work.

You'll never get whitepapers about optimisation work that goes into BIOS and driver updates. That's just how it is.

However if you are truly interested in technical documentation for other things like actual products and software, you should have a look here. I don't believe there is any (public) whitepaper for Smart Access Memory though.

Cheers bud much appreciated.

Do you see lower vram usage with ReBar off?

 

[Kaapstad]

I took home a 6900XT Red devil ultimate last night. The sag is unreal.

Moving on from a Vega 56 that I modded with an AIO.

Wanted a sapphire toxic extreme but couldn't find any so I went with the red devil ultimate.

Welcome and on TROH.

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[varkanoid]

Spill the beans then, as I would like the know how they are technically different as I am genuinely interested?

Sorry I`m not privvy to that information. It was a joke, chill. Who cares, ReBAR is the official name, SAM is AMD's version similiar to AMD has Freesync and Nvidia has Gsync. Its all Marketing spin anyway on top of what it actually does to create debate and divide opinion. If you are talking about it then the Marketing guys have earned their $$$$.

Who cares its 2022 enjoy what you have.

 

[uksoldierboy]

You'll never get whitepapers about optimisation work that goes into BIOS and driver updates. That's just how it is.

However if you are truly interested in technical documentation for other things like actual products and software, you should have a look here. I don't believe there is any (public) whitepaper for Smart Access Memory though.


Do you see lower vram usage with ReBar off?

Truthfully I've not tried with rebar disabled, but I can give it a go when home, I'm not even sure if it helps within RDR2, I just leave it on, so it'll be good to actually see if it helps in the game.

 

[LtMatt]

Truthfully I've not tried with rebar disabled, but I can give it a go when home, I'm not even sure if it helps within RDR2, I just leave it on, so it'll be good to actually see if it helps in the game.

I only mention it as another user (forgot his name but if he reads this post feel free to chime in) in the Far Cry 6 vram thread mentioned that he saw higher usage with it on.

He was using a Nvidia GPU, but seeing as you mentioned vram usage and ReBar thought it might be worth trying to see if it reduces usage.

 

[uksoldierboy]

I only mention it as another user (forgot his name but if he reads this post feel free to chime in) in the Far Cry 6 vram thread mentioned that he saw higher usage with it on.

He was using a Nvidia GPU, but seeing as you mentioned vram usage and ReBar thought it might be worth trying to see if it reduces usage.

No worries I appreciate the heads up, I'll disable it now and see how it looks.

 

[uksoldierboy]

Matt i've just done some testing using the in game benchmarking.

My findings

Settings 1440P - 6900XT @2600-2700 (2664) 2124 mem (2112) 12600KF @5.1/ Ecores 4.1
Everything ultra including advanced options, Vulkan, water quality 3/4, TAA medium, vsync off, triple buffering off, Radeon image sharpening 50%

Run 1 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8097mb
FPS 92.4

Run 2 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 9279mb
FPS 92.2

Run 3 REBAR Disabled
Vram usage peak 8944mb
FPS 92.4

With REBAR Enabled

Run 1
Vram usage peak 13491mb
FPS 98.1

Run 2
Vram usage peak 13479mb
FPS 98.1

Run 3
Vram usage peak 13468mb
FPS 98.2

All measured using Radeon Metrics overlay.

unless there's a read error, it does seem like using Rebar, at least in RDR2 on a z690 and intel 12 series, does in fact use quite a bit more vram, strangely i've seen it go as high as 16570mb in game after a few hours of playing, as mentioned though, i've not suffered none of the issues one would associate with hitting the vram limit, i've seen it go over 16gb on a few occasions, maybe my lack of issues is down to having a PCI Gen 4 Nvme and thus the transfer speeds are much higher?
in any case, using rebar at least in my brief testing using the benchmarking, does give more performance.
I'll continue to look into it more though, i've only had the one crash in hours and hours of gameplay ( DX FFFFF) not even sure it's related to memory usage, but thought it worth mentioning.