Disabling Intel E-Cores On Hybrid CPU Nets 50% Better Performance In Atlas Fallen
Atlas Fallen, a recently released title, has an optimization issue with Intel Hybrid CPUs (12th Gen and above), leading to severely degraded performance.
Before we get into the main part, knowing about Intel's hybrid CPU design becomes crucial. With the release of Alder Lake, Intel introduced a hybrid core configuration based on "P-Cores" and "E-Cores". While we won't go into detail about specific technologies, to sum it up, E-Cores are mainly responsible for handling background tasks that don't require much attention in terms of power. As "E" suggests, these cores are known to be power efficient, and in simple terms, Intel had found a way to distribute workloads to ensure faster and more efficient performance through its Thread Director technology.
According to extensive testing by TechPowerUp, Atlas Fallen is unable to distinguish between E/P Cores on Intel's Hybrid CPUs, which leads to a significant decrease in overall performance. The benchmarks obtained utilized Intel's Core i9-13900K, which comes under the Raptor Lake family and features the "hybrid" design mentioned above. Initial testing reveals that the RPG utilizes all cores, which looks like a good thing, but in reality, it is completely different.
As highlighted by the source, a title optimized for "Intel Hybrid" CPUs should use P-Cores for heavy workloads while the E-cores for backgrounds ones. In this case, when the mainstream workload comes on E-Cores, it results in a massive drop in performance. This "E-Core" priority also results in a delay between individual cores, since the "frame data" processes much faster in P-Cores.
If you are facing a similar performance bottleneck, the current solution is to disable E-Cores. While we won't go into the actual method,
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