Intel are withholding the feature of fixing their E-core performance hinderance to their latest generation of processors which shares identical hardware to the previous generation which quite clearly have been abandoned.
Since the introduction of Intel Hybrid processor designs featuring a reduction in overall Performance core counts but the introduction of “Efficient” cores that were to simply boost performance from a much lower footprint and serve as being more scalable (and efficient) option.
While Intel’s concept works on multithreaded workloads, the subject of gaming has always been a sketchy one since the release of their 12th Generation “Alder Lake” CPUs, where Intel’s gaming performance could see a regression in frame rates by having Intel’s E-cores enabled.
The same thing tends to happen in regards to AMD’s Ryzen processors when disabling an entire CCD, simply due to the latency constrictions across chiplets.
This issue has always been somewhat game dependent, with some titles showing increased or decreased frame rate figures by having E-cores enabled or disabled, the same used to be said about enabling SMT / HT on AMD and Intel processors as well, however one major complaint about Intel’s Hybrid design in terms of gaming performance comes from induced stuttering.
Games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Star Citizen are notorious for stuttering with Intel’s E-cores enabled, disabling them resolves the issues and increases framerate stability and outright performance.
The cause is simple, a scheduling conflict, the Windows scheduler continues to face challenges in effectively managing heterogeneous CPUs. Rather than appropriately allocating E-cores to background processes that aren’t latency sensitive, it has a tendency to assign them to primary game threads, thereby diminishing overall performance.
It’s not down to just pure latency alone however, especially given how the Gracemont E-cores featured inside Raptor Lake don’t actually share the same instruction set as Raptor Cove for example. Intel’s Hybrid design essentially features cores with differences in IPC (Instructions Per Clock) performance, given the low frequency and low power nature of these E-cores you don’t really want to be passing sensitive workloads onto these E-Cores.
Intel have finally come up with a solution to mitigate performance losses in gaming scenarios with their big.LITTLE hybrid processors with the introduction of the Application Optimizer or APO which allegedly “modifies the scheduler policy to maximize performance”.
Intel’s APO does in-fact solve the performance regression in some gaming titles if the user were to rightfully use their Intel Hybrid CPU as intended by having Efficiency cores enabled, with Intel APO boosting gaming performance anywhere from 5% to as high as 18% as per the findings by Hardware Unboxed.
To utilize Intel’s APO, you must update the BIOS firmware to the latest version and then install the APO app which can be found on the Microsoft Store.
Yep. It’s a goddamn UMP application, were you expecting anything else?
However, for users with previous generation Intel Core 12th or 13th Gen CPUs , the app outright refuses to establish a “connection” making this a software-level restriction for previous generation hardware which figuratively should easily be compatible with the Application Optimizer, but more about that in a moment.
Hardware Unboxed had investigated Intel’s APO (Application Optimizer) to discover that Intel achieves these substantial performance gains by simply increasing the frequency of E-cores that are being utilized during gameplay.
A free 5-18% performance increase in games? Sounds amazing right, well that’s because it is but Intel APO doesn’t come without a major caveat.
What’s the catch? Intel are artificially restricting this net performance gain to its 14th Generation processors exclusively, despite fundamentally being the exact same as the previous 13th Generation Core processors, Intel’s APO is locked to the Core i7-14700K and Core i9-14900K CPUs respectively.
There are zero changes both architecturally and fundamentally moving from the 13th Generation to the 14th Generation, aside from the lovely override that now allows Intel Core processors to exceed temperatures above 115 degrees Celsius there have been no adjustments whatsoever, the only difference are marginally higher frequencies from a slightly more mature processing node.
There is absolutely zero reason why the Core i7-13700K and Core i9-13900K cannot support Intel’s APO outside of artificial bullshit to effectively create a bogus performance gap between the two generations in a desperate bid to garner interest towards Raptor Lake Refresh which seemingly has the “fix” to regressive gaming performance figures stemming from the utilization of E-cores in games.
If we want to press on a bit further Intel could easily implement this onto 12th Generation “Alder Lake” CPUs as well, given the actual difference between Golden Cove and Raptor Cove boils down to a change in cache hierarchy, people like to judge Intel’s 14th Generation Core processors as being a “refresh” when in actuality you might as well call call it a rebrand instead,
The differences between Alder Lake and Raptor Lake (Golden Cove vs Raptor Cove) is enough to justifiably consider it to be an actual refresh, because it’s an adjustment of the same exact core architecture, with a substantial bump in the amount of L2 cache, while the Gracemont E-cores have remained the exact same throughout Intel’s 12th Generation to their latest 14th Generation.
Intel’s APO works like a charm, boosting performance or rather mitigating the losses brought upon by the utilization of E-cores during gameplay, but it only serves to benefit brand loyalists who couldn’t care less about power consumption or even CPU core temperatures.
Even the fact that Intel’s 14th Generation is a glorified rebrand with next to zero platform longevity doesn’t dissuade them, Intel aim to phase out the LGA 1700 socket alongside their current naming scheme as they move forward with “14th Generation” Meteor Lake CPUs for mobile and 15th Gen “Arrow Lake” on desktop platforms.
Intel could just as easily support previous generation CPUs with the Application Optimizer but are arbitrarily withholding support to their latest crop of CPUs to ensure an artificial performance gap between two generations that share identical hardware (and performance) and for that reason alone they can genuinely go fuck themselves.
