- Intel has released a full and detailed report on Arrow Lake’s underperformance
- Five separate issues were highlighted, four of which have now been resolved
- You will need to update your BIOS and Windows 11 to get these solutions
Intel has completed its in-depth investigation into issues with its Core Ultra 200S processors and presented the full results – with most issues now resolved and one more fix due in January 2025.
As you may recall, these Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, which launched in October, were disappointed with their initial performance (especially for PC gaming) and Intel subsequently admitted that Core Ultra 200S CPUs did not perform as well as expected, but that solutions were in the works. pipeline.
We’ve essentially been promised solutions to a “set of multifactorial problems,” and now we have the full picture of those gremlins in the silicon factory.
In a long blog post, a ‘field update(part one of two), Intel noted that: “Editorial conclusions about game performance were more polarized, with notable statistical variations from one article to the next. These results were inconsistent with our internal testing.”
Team Blue then says, “we have identified that there are five different topics that could change performance or functionality,” before listing these areas. They are as follows:
- A missing Performance & Power Management (PPM) package
- Intel Application Performance Optimizer (APO) cannot take effect
- BSODs when attempting to launch game titles using the Easy Anti-Cheat service
- Select performance settings that are misconfigured in the reviewer or BIOSs that are enabled prematurely
- New BIOS performance optimizations
All of these issues are root-caused (meaning Intel has gotten to the bottom of why they’re happening) and the first four have been resolved by updates that are already available.
To take advantage of these fixes, you’ll need to take advantage of two important updates. First, update Windows 11 to build 26100.2314 (or newer), which is the November cumulative update for the 24H2 version. (We assume the 23H2 update for the same month will also work – but Team Blue doesn’t mention this, so that’s not clear). This will address issues number one and two as mentioned above.
Secondly, you need to obtain the latest BIOS update for your motherboard, which will solve problem number four. As for issue three, that has been resolved by an Easy Anti-Cheat driver update (which will be reflected in the game that uses this anti-cheat system, which was problematic with Arrow Lake on Windows 11 24H2).
The last issue, number five, is the one that will be resolved in January 2025 with a new BIOS update, which will provide a further performance boost.
Analysis: Initial double-digit boost, then single-digit follow-up
As Intel notes, you might still want to wait until next month, then run your BIOS update and grab fixes to issues four and five in one fell swoop.
While the exact gaming (and apps) performance boost you get will depend on your exact mix of PC components and system configuration – as always – it looks like the first BIOS update (for issue four) will give you at least an increase of a few percent, or perhaps a double-digit increase (up to 14% in theory, a pretty wide range). The second patch (for issue five, due in January) will likely deliver a “modest performance improvement in the single-digit range,” we’re told.
So both BIOS updates will probably deliver a similar increase of around 5%, maybe a little more, but if you’re lucky – or unlucky, depending on how you look at it – you’ll get an even bigger boost (because your system is running in the first place). was more bothered by these problems).
We should also point out that solution number two is for Intel APO (Application Performance Optimization) technology, so only a small number of games will benefit from this (those that support APO).
Intel has been commendably transparent in this process and in disclosing the detailed results of its investigation – as the company promised. So that’s a clear sign for Team Blue, and hopefully the sluggishness of Arrow Lake gaming will be pretty much resolved by the time we reach the end of January 2025.
Via VideoCardz