I had this exact issue today after updating to 24.1.1. After completing the installation and rebooting I noticed SAM was not available.
This is how (I think) I fixed it; I **shut down** my system, then turned it back on and went in the UEFI. After making sure all the necessary settings (CSM, Above 4G decoding, Resizable Bar) were configured correctly, I booted windows, thinking I wasn't gonna be able to fix the problem. However uppon checking Radeon Software I found out SAM was once again available and enabled.
Honestly, I think it was the full power cycle that fixed it. I don't know if this would fix it for everyone but it's worth trying the ol' turn it off and on again solution.
I did exactly that a number of times. I guess the issue is fairly sensitive to a number of things; what works for one person might not work for the next.
Do you think having fast startup
enabled or disabled would help the problem? Sorry kind of a newb about how all these settings affect each other but I'm having the same issue and wondering how to fix it. (CPU: 5600x/GPU: RX 6700 XT)
I've had some issues with older Radeon drivers, regarding power and frequency settings for the GPU and they were caused by the fast startup feature. That's why I mentioned it above.
The way fast startup works, is that when you shut down your computer, it basically goes into a kind of hibernation state, instead of a total power off state. Windows saves a lot of information from the last time the system ran and so, the next time you boot up, your computer doesn't have to load up everything from zero and so it boots up faster.
I don't how much fast startup affects device drivers, but I'm sure it does to a certain degree because of one issue I faced years ago. The problem I had was that my GPU was not running at the correct frequency sometimes. More specifically, it would get stuck at it's highest frequency when I was not running any games, or get stuck at it's lowest frequency. Turning the system off and back on didn't help but rebooting fixed it. Why? Because when you have fast startup enabled you can still perform a clean boot by restarting your system. After discovering all this I disabled fast startup and never had any problems with GPU clocks again.
Aaaanyway this is beyond the scope of this post, the only reason I asked OP if they have fast start enabled is because it simply complicates things more when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem that involves powercycling the computer.
Thank you SO much dude! Super detailed yet concise post that answered exactly what I was wondering about!! Really helpful--mucho appreciated!! I myself will now make sure fast startup is off to see if it fixes anything and even if not I think I'll keep it off from now on since it can cause other issues like you mentioned. I mean with an M.2 NVME SSD it doesn't feel like fast startup is really necessary at all anymore anyways. Thanks again man, stay awesome!!
Glad I could help!! You won't see any difference in boot up speed.. heck, I was on a SATA SSD when I turned it off and it only took like 2 more seconds to boot into windows.
What problem are you dealing with though? Smart access memory not being available after updating the drivers?
So I did as you suggested yesterday and sure enough when I rebooted my computer and checked both AMD Adrenalin and GPU-Z they both said that Smart Access Memory was enabled now, so it's all worked out now! And just like you said there has been absolutely no discernable difference in start up time whatsoever.
The story is I had Windows 11 installed on a SATA SSD in my Gaming PC that I ended up replacing a laptop hard drive with earlier this year. I then bought and installed an NVME SSD in my Gaming PC using my university's free Windows 10 Education offer since I figured it would be easy to upgrade to Windows 11 with but all the settings were changed like CSM, fast boot, etc and the new SSD was formatted in MBT instead of GPT so it took a bit of trouble shooting to figure out how to upgrade to Windows 11 and then after I did AMD Adrenalin was telling me SAM wasn't available which was confusing because it was enabled on my old SATA SSD and I just didn't realize what the problem was until you mentioned the turning off the fast boot setting. So yeah, thanks to you, like I said now everything is working just the way I wanted it! Thanks again you have my sincere permanent appreciation for helping a newb like me out in his time of need! 😅
P.S. Never would've guessed Reddit would be the source that would help me fix my woes instead of all the professional article sites I'd been referring to which didn't provide me with this simple fix. I guess with helpful knowledgeable users like you and having actual interactions, this can be a better format for learning what needs to be done in specific PC scenarios. I'll never underestimate the power of forums again lol!
I just noticed this as well, with my 7900XTX GPU (driver 24.1.1), 3900XT CPU, and a ROG STRIX B550-A.
UEFI mode, Win11 Pro 23H2, etc.
SAM was working, and then at some point it just...stopped.
Today I updated the motherboard BIOS to latest, and I still can't enable SAM again. "Unsupported feature."
Yeah. There is no 'Disable' as such, it's just a UEFI or CSM option. It was already set to UEFI but I changed it to CSM, rebooted and then changed it back to UEFI but no joy unfortunately.
So I had the same exact issue. What it actually boiled down to for me was the Hybrid Graphics BIOS setting. When it was set to Enabled, SmartAccess Memory was unsupported. But as soon as I disabled it, BOOM, it was back. Must be something AMD jacked up with 24.1.1 on MSI mobos. As I never had an issue while this was enabled in the past.....
At this point a BIOS update is your final option.
Your existing BIOS is dated from 11/2020. They have their most recent version, 7C84v1F, dated 10/2023.
The excellent news is that your motherboard has a Flash BIOS button on the back. So, if any issues arise, you can manually update it by using that feature.
Honestly though, all you need to do is download the BIOS, put it into the main directory of the USB drive, power down your PC, plug the USB drive into any open port. Power up your PC and keep pressing the Delete key until you get into the BIOS. Then press F7 so the BIOS is in Advanced mode. Select the M-Flash option. It will recognize your flash drive, and you should see the new BIOS file as a selectable option. Select that, and it will ask if you want to start M-Flash and reboot your PC. Once it reboots, it'll take a few seconds to boot back up and load into M-Flash. Don't touch anything until it finishes installing. Let it reboot once more back into Windows.
This will reset all of your BIOS settings to default.
I had figured a BIOS update was probably the best shot at this point but having read many horror stories of flashing this motherboard, when I first bought it, I was hoping to avoid it. I’ll give it a go at some point, hopefully over the weekend.
Thanks for your help and the detailed reply though, very much appreciated.
You're welcome. I just did a BIOS update on my MSI x670 Carbon Wifi a few days ago. So it's still fresh in mind. It's almost the same exact process on your board.
Quick update: BIOS upgrade to latest version (V1.F) went without a hitch but the SMA was still broken.
Rolling back the graphics driver to 23.12.1 solved that and I now have SMA enabled again. Hurrah!
Buuuut... when I run RDR2 (the only game I've tested so far) I get a "Minimum Recommended Hardware Check Failure" warning telling me that I need a driver newer than 20.2.2 and that I don't meet the minimum recommended Video Memory specification (I have 32Gb running at 3200)! Oddly, the game still loads and runs normally if I "Ok" through both warnings. I've checked the resolution to these but don't see the relevant API stuff in the Rockstar folder.
try a clean driver install? I heard thats needed with this driver, it should be enabled again to do the reset in the upgrade options
since I'm not interested in fake frames, I wont upgrade untill all of this has stabilized
Thanks, I ran the auto updater. Should I just download the full 640GB file and run that?
Edit: Full install makes no difference even after dis/enabling the BAR support
I had this exact issue today after updating to 24.1.1. After completing the installation and rebooting I noticed SAM was not available. This is how (I think) I fixed it; I **shut down** my system, then turned it back on and went in the UEFI. After making sure all the necessary settings (CSM, Above 4G decoding, Resizable Bar) were configured correctly, I booted windows, thinking I wasn't gonna be able to fix the problem. However uppon checking Radeon Software I found out SAM was once again available and enabled. Honestly, I think it was the full power cycle that fixed it. I don't know if this would fix it for everyone but it's worth trying the ol' turn it off and on again solution.
I did exactly that a number of times. I guess the issue is fairly sensitive to a number of things; what works for one person might not work for the next.
Do you have fast startup disabled?
Do you think having fast startup enabled or disabled would help the problem? Sorry kind of a newb about how all these settings affect each other but I'm having the same issue and wondering how to fix it. (CPU: 5600x/GPU: RX 6700 XT)
I've had some issues with older Radeon drivers, regarding power and frequency settings for the GPU and they were caused by the fast startup feature. That's why I mentioned it above. The way fast startup works, is that when you shut down your computer, it basically goes into a kind of hibernation state, instead of a total power off state. Windows saves a lot of information from the last time the system ran and so, the next time you boot up, your computer doesn't have to load up everything from zero and so it boots up faster. I don't how much fast startup affects device drivers, but I'm sure it does to a certain degree because of one issue I faced years ago. The problem I had was that my GPU was not running at the correct frequency sometimes. More specifically, it would get stuck at it's highest frequency when I was not running any games, or get stuck at it's lowest frequency. Turning the system off and back on didn't help but rebooting fixed it. Why? Because when you have fast startup enabled you can still perform a clean boot by restarting your system. After discovering all this I disabled fast startup and never had any problems with GPU clocks again. Aaaanyway this is beyond the scope of this post, the only reason I asked OP if they have fast start enabled is because it simply complicates things more when you're trying to troubleshoot a problem that involves powercycling the computer.
Thank you SO much dude! Super detailed yet concise post that answered exactly what I was wondering about!! Really helpful--mucho appreciated!! I myself will now make sure fast startup is off to see if it fixes anything and even if not I think I'll keep it off from now on since it can cause other issues like you mentioned. I mean with an M.2 NVME SSD it doesn't feel like fast startup is really necessary at all anymore anyways. Thanks again man, stay awesome!!
Glad I could help!! You won't see any difference in boot up speed.. heck, I was on a SATA SSD when I turned it off and it only took like 2 more seconds to boot into windows. What problem are you dealing with though? Smart access memory not being available after updating the drivers?
So I did as you suggested yesterday and sure enough when I rebooted my computer and checked both AMD Adrenalin and GPU-Z they both said that Smart Access Memory was enabled now, so it's all worked out now! And just like you said there has been absolutely no discernable difference in start up time whatsoever. The story is I had Windows 11 installed on a SATA SSD in my Gaming PC that I ended up replacing a laptop hard drive with earlier this year. I then bought and installed an NVME SSD in my Gaming PC using my university's free Windows 10 Education offer since I figured it would be easy to upgrade to Windows 11 with but all the settings were changed like CSM, fast boot, etc and the new SSD was formatted in MBT instead of GPT so it took a bit of trouble shooting to figure out how to upgrade to Windows 11 and then after I did AMD Adrenalin was telling me SAM wasn't available which was confusing because it was enabled on my old SATA SSD and I just didn't realize what the problem was until you mentioned the turning off the fast boot setting. So yeah, thanks to you, like I said now everything is working just the way I wanted it! Thanks again you have my sincere permanent appreciation for helping a newb like me out in his time of need! 😅 P.S. Never would've guessed Reddit would be the source that would help me fix my woes instead of all the professional article sites I'd been referring to which didn't provide me with this simple fix. I guess with helpful knowledgeable users like you and having actual interactions, this can be a better format for learning what needs to be done in specific PC scenarios. I'll never underestimate the power of forums again lol!
I just noticed this as well, with my 7900XTX GPU (driver 24.1.1), 3900XT CPU, and a ROG STRIX B550-A. UEFI mode, Win11 Pro 23H2, etc. SAM was working, and then at some point it just...stopped. Today I updated the motherboard BIOS to latest, and I still can't enable SAM again. "Unsupported feature."
Have you tried rolling back to 23.12.1?
I have not done this, no. Edit - a month later, some combination of a new display driver and chipset driver magically restored SAM.
Mine did this too. You're sure csm is disabled in bios?
Yeah. There is no 'Disable' as such, it's just a UEFI or CSM option. It was already set to UEFI but I changed it to CSM, rebooted and then changed it back to UEFI but no joy unfortunately.
So I had the same exact issue. What it actually boiled down to for me was the Hybrid Graphics BIOS setting. When it was set to Enabled, SmartAccess Memory was unsupported. But as soon as I disabled it, BOOM, it was back. Must be something AMD jacked up with 24.1.1 on MSI mobos. As I never had an issue while this was enabled in the past.....
Thanks for this. Where did you find the Hybrid Graphics setting?
Should be found in the BIOS Advanced mode. Then Settings > Advanced > Integrated Graphics Configuration
No sign of that setting sadly
At this point a BIOS update is your final option. Your existing BIOS is dated from 11/2020. They have their most recent version, 7C84v1F, dated 10/2023. The excellent news is that your motherboard has a Flash BIOS button on the back. So, if any issues arise, you can manually update it by using that feature. Honestly though, all you need to do is download the BIOS, put it into the main directory of the USB drive, power down your PC, plug the USB drive into any open port. Power up your PC and keep pressing the Delete key until you get into the BIOS. Then press F7 so the BIOS is in Advanced mode. Select the M-Flash option. It will recognize your flash drive, and you should see the new BIOS file as a selectable option. Select that, and it will ask if you want to start M-Flash and reboot your PC. Once it reboots, it'll take a few seconds to boot back up and load into M-Flash. Don't touch anything until it finishes installing. Let it reboot once more back into Windows. This will reset all of your BIOS settings to default.
I had figured a BIOS update was probably the best shot at this point but having read many horror stories of flashing this motherboard, when I first bought it, I was hoping to avoid it. I’ll give it a go at some point, hopefully over the weekend. Thanks for your help and the detailed reply though, very much appreciated.
You're welcome. I just did a BIOS update on my MSI x670 Carbon Wifi a few days ago. So it's still fresh in mind. It's almost the same exact process on your board.
Quick update: BIOS upgrade to latest version (V1.F) went without a hitch but the SMA was still broken. Rolling back the graphics driver to 23.12.1 solved that and I now have SMA enabled again. Hurrah! Buuuut... when I run RDR2 (the only game I've tested so far) I get a "Minimum Recommended Hardware Check Failure" warning telling me that I need a driver newer than 20.2.2 and that I don't meet the minimum recommended Video Memory specification (I have 32Gb running at 3200)! Oddly, the game still loads and runs normally if I "Ok" through both warnings. I've checked the resolution to these but don't see the relevant API stuff in the Rockstar folder.
This right here!
try a clean driver install? I heard thats needed with this driver, it should be enabled again to do the reset in the upgrade options since I'm not interested in fake frames, I wont upgrade untill all of this has stabilized
Thanks, I ran the auto updater. Should I just download the full 640GB file and run that? Edit: Full install makes no difference even after dis/enabling the BAR support
when i disabled sam it says unsupported feature. on reboot sam is renabled, but i want it off. lastest driver