Intel has identified and fixed several performance issues with Intel Arrow Lake

After the launch of the new Intel Arrow Lake for desktop computers, known as Intel Core Ultra 200-Sthe manufacturer has not been satisfied with its performance in terms of gaming refers. The figures have been below expectations, even below references from previous generations. Let’s get to work Intel has managed to solve 4 of the 5 incidents that have been found as a result of this poor performance in gaming, which they have managed to solve thanks to performance updates and optimizations.

The issues found by Intel as a result of the investigation initiated there are 5of which 4 already have a solution. The last one will have to wait to mid-January 2025since it is needed introduce new microcode. The other 4 problems solved are as follows.

Lack of an energy management plan

In addition to the performance that the processor can offer, the operating system also has energy plans which can be adjusted as balanced, performance or low consumption. With a freshly installed system and a new CPU, the plans are very generic and it is necessary to complete them using a drivers or Windows updates. This situation has caused, for example, DRAM to have latencies between 1.5 and 2 times longer than normal, penalizing performance in Windows that are not properly updated.

This can cause a loss of performance of between 6 and 30%but Intel has solved this problem with the Windows 11 update build 26100.2161 (KB5044384).

Intel APO had no effect

Intel APO (Application Performance Optimizer) is a software that allows you to redirect in real time the tasks to the different available threadsto optimize resources and offer better performance. A technology that has an impact on games when used correctly. But Not all games had this supportthose based on profiles depend on the availability of the CPU to offer correct redirection of instructions.

A problem that also has to do with the lack of an energy management plan, which put the system in situations where could not function with the greatest effectivenessand Intel APO had no effect. An impact that can have a performance cost of between 2 and 14% It depends on the game and the parallelism. But fortunately has already been resolved with the same version of Windows 11 build 26100.2161 above.

Games with Easy Anti-Cheat Anti-Cheat software

Some games that include anti-cheat softwareto prevent players from using tricks that benefit them and offer them an advantage, has caused a bug with Windows 11 24H2 versions April 2024 and later. The system can return a blue screen when trying to run the game, although it is not a feature that has an impact on performance, Epic Games has released an update to this software that fixes the problem.

Misconfigured BIOS performance options

Along with these new processors, they are accompanied a lot of new technologies to get the most out of gaming performance. Technologies like Resizable BAR which allows direct access to the VRAM memory, or the aforementioned Intel APO. Intel has identified that some of these options They were not correctly configured in the BIOSdue to a default BIOS during the review period.

This can cause high memory latenciesbetween 1.5 and 2 times more than normal, with erratic fluctuations in frequencies and higher than normal workloads. This situation prevented the system from benefiting of these technologies such as Resizable BAR or Intel APO.

The situation may have a performance impact of between 2 and 14%depending on the BIOS configuration chosen. A situation that is corrected by offering a properly configured BIOS to get the most out of performance.

Performance optimizations at the BIOS level

Along with these solutions, Intel plans to release a new version of BIOS that will allow improve performance and optimize available resources on Intel Arrow Lake. For this it is required a new firmware that will have the microcode version 0x114 and its launch is scheduled for mid-January 2025. A version that will also depend on the manufacturer of your motherboard and the rapid adoption to launch this new version of BIOS.

A series of optimizations to improve performance

Intel is aware of this problem, which is why has gone to work and a month and a half after the launch it has encountered these difficulties that has managed to correct. Let’s hope that with these measures the Intel Arrow Lake processors can obtain the expected performance data of this new generation, included in games.

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