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Intel IT Technology

Intel's New 14th Gen CPUs Get a Boost To Gaming Performance With APO Feature (theverge.com) 34

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Intel's latest 14th Gen chips aren't a huge improvement over the 13th Gen in gaming performance, but a new Intel Application Optimization (APO) feature might just change that. From a report: Intel's new APO app simply runs in the background, improving performance in games. It offers impressive boosts to frame rates in games that support it, like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege and Metro Exodus. Intel Application Optimization essentially directs application resources in real time through a scheduling policy that fine-tunes performance for games and potentially even other applications in the future.

It operates alongside Intel's Thread Director, a technology that's designed to improve how apps and games are assigned to performance or efficiency cores depending on the performance needs. The result is some solid gains to performance in certain games, with one Reddit poster seeing a 200fps boost in Rainbow Six Siege at 1080p. "Not all games benefit from APO," explained Intel VP Roger Chandler in a press briefing ahead of the 14th Gen launch. "As we test and verify games we will add those that benefit the most, so gamers can get the best performance from their systems."
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Intel's New 14th Gen CPUs Get a Boost To Gaming Performance With APO Feature More

Intel's New 14th Gen CPUs Get a Boost To Gaming Performance With APO Feature

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  • They can't figure out how to make better CPUs, so they pull out this kind of BS.

    Why yes, I am an AMD fanboy. Why do you ask? Doesn't make what I said any less true.

    • You're not wrong, but it's also not clear that this is a bad idea. If it can be disabled for games with aggressive anti cheat code then I don't see what to be mad at.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        This doesn't appear to do anything that would/should impact anti-cheat measures. It appears to just micromanage thread director's policy based on the game/app being run. It's not actually touching anything specific to the games themselves, just how Windows manages threads.

    • They can't figure out how to make better CPUs, so they pull out this kind of BS.

      Are you implying that scheduling and thread management aren't important? I'm sorry to say but your AMD CPU has "this kind of BS" as well, it just didn't come with a press release.

      • Are you implying that scheduling and thread management aren't important? I'm sorry to say but your AMD CPU has "this kind of BS" as well, it just didn't come with a press release.

        Nope, I am calling them out for releasing a "new" CPU that is just the old CPU with some thread management software tacked on. I expect there was no need at all to release a "new" CPU for this and should have just dropped the software.

  • What this country (US) and others need is WAY more time for people sitting on their asses playing games. Way, way more! Up to this point, we've been twiddling our thumbs hardly playing games enough! MORE, I say! MORE! MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE! DAMN IT! ARE WE EVEN TRYING YET?! Work those thumbs! Follow those arbitrary paths set out for you by game companies! We need to Pavlov this sh*t out! Ring that bell and slobber people! Mush! Move! EEEE-YAH!!!! Why are you waiting around! If you can't do some

    • What this country (US) and others need is WAY more time for people sitting on their asses reading books. Way, way more! Up to this point, we've been twiddling our thumbs hardly reading books enough! MORE, I say! MORE! MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE MORE! DAMN IT! ARE WE EVEN TRYING YET?! Work those eyes! Follow those arbitrary paths set out for you by book authors! We need to Pavlov this sh*t out! Ring that bell and slobber people! Mush! Move! EEEE-YAH!!!! Why are you waiting around! If you can't do somethin

      • Last time I checked, one does not preclude the other.

        • The point is, most people wouldn't shit on people spending their free time reading books. Video games are treated differently merely because old people don't like them, not because they are somehow a more degenerate behavior

          • The point is, most people wouldn't shit on people spending their free time reading books. Video games are treated differently merely because old people don't like them, not because they are somehow a more degenerate behavior

            Define "Old people" because at 55 I think I qualify as old and I, for one, LOVE VIDEO GAMES! I also love reading.

          • Depends on what kind of games, and depends what kind of books. ...or what kind of TV shows, what kind of movies, what kind of parties, etc.

            Every pastime of every kind could be either beneficial, or brain damaging.

            Shitting on any of the above without nuancing is stupid.

    • Bro you just wrote that on Slashdot, which is a text MMO. Develop a sense of irony already.

  • Are they just pinning few threads on "Big" cores ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GM ( 7955 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @01:36PM (#63953627)

    May be, it is really time for game engine designers to support only Linux and learn to how use capacity aware scheduler ?

    • >it is really time for game engine designers to support only Linux
      Ya, allll those Linux home users will definitely be a bigger market than the Windows ones /s

    • To what end? Dump 99.9% of your target market to give a benefit in performance perceived by one lonely Slashdotter? (Do you have a citation that this scheduler is better for games than whatever Windows is doing? Show me the benchmarks if you are going to make a statement like that).

    • My guess they are doing a bit more than that, otherwise you'd get a similar boost simply by disabling the E-cores, forcing everything to the P-cores which is more or less what you want anyway for gaming.

      Probably what they are doing is a mix of:
      - The "Turbo Boost Max" feature basically means that Intel has al/ready identified which of the P-cores can boost the most, so be sure to stick the most important thread on that core (likely the main thread)
      - The P-cores have hyperthreading, so avoid scheduling someth

  • Redirect resources? (Score:3)

    by Tyr07 ( 8900565 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @02:18PM (#63953795)

    So what, are they just redirecting resources from the sh*t we don't need that runs their analytics and bloatware, Microsoft telemetry etc, into what we actually want to do?

    They added an app that figures out when the other stuff is being too greedy and adjust resources? Maybe I just don't have enough details so my perception is wrong, or maybe they need to just give me all the resources for what I want to do on the hardware I pay for and not direct to other things I'm not doing at the time.

    It feels very much these days that they've gone to 'Let's make no application seem slow like our bloaty stuff by making everything run at a similar speed, but let's make a special app so that some programs can run at full speed as extra performance games'

    • Re:Redirect resources? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @03:01PM (#63953955)

      No, what it means is the e-cores on 14th-gen Intel CPUs mostly slow games down, and the thread scheduler they've been working on for years with MS still doesn't do a good job of keeping high-priority threads off those e-cores. So they're taking another whack at it on a game-by-game basis, sort of the way NV and ATI/AMD used to produce SLI/Crossfire profiles for individual games (and both companies still have game-specific driver hacks).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        The E-cores aren't a problem with 12th gen, or 13th gen, when taken as a whole. Do you have any evidence that they're a problem with 14th-gen?

        • I think "problem" is relative. Specifically they aren't providing enough of a benefit that people see a reason to own a 14th gen part which in games seems to be coming in pretty much identical to the 13th. I was reading the Intel game optimisation guide and it said some fairly damning things. To pick just one that irked me was that it stated that many games would allocate the sound processing to a thread set to high priority because while the audio processing isn't necessarily taxing, it's something you don

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            My only gripe was with the claim that E-cores slow down games. All evidence from 12th and 13th gen indicates it isn't a problem. Yes, technically there are games that perform worse with them enabled, but taken as a whole 12th gen was basically neutral and 13th gen was a slight improvement with E-cores enabled. The best I can really find right now with 14th gen is that it's only marginally better than 13th gen, and not anything specific about E-cores.

            As for APO, I agree it's a step in the right direction. I

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ChoGGi ( 522069 )

          Disabling ecores when playing CS2 nets you a benefit in both 13 and 14 gen (and probably 12).

          I'd guess that's more along the lines of what this APO is doing?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            Many/most games being benchmarked have a near zero performance difference, and the overall difference is near zero. There are examples of games benefiting from e-cores enabled, and e-cores disable, but no evidence that e-cores mostly slow games down. As for APO, it's just optimizing the policy used by thread director so improving thread placement on cores. It should mitigate any penalties for games that perform worse with e-cores enabled.

        • Define "problem". Just because Intel improved something on the 14th gen, doesn't mean there wasn't a potential performance gain to be had on the 12th and 13th gen. They are just promoting their latest product by limiting it to the newer gen, kind of like how NVIDIA said VSR wasn't available for RTX20 series, right until they said "okay we'll enable it on RTX20series as well" two weeks ago.

        • https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]

          Judge for yourself.

          People's personal experiences vary, and a few games like the one Spiderman console port that compiled shades in real-time loves scores. Then there are games like PUBG.

          • Shaders not shades

            Ecores not scores

            Meh.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            That is 12th gen, not 14th gen. 12th gen is known to be worse than 13th gen. However, I've seen that video before and even double checked it before I responded to you. At 1080p, across all tests, 12th gen ran 1% slower on average with e-cores enabled. At 1440p, there was no effective difference. There will be differences on a game to game basis, but you said mostly slow games down. Their testing shows e-cores overall have no benefits or losses when it comes to games plural. For reference, the numbers for 13

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tyr07 ( 8900565 )

        I definitely had the wrong angle on this.

        Is that actually a major hurdle their facing? A lack of adoption from gamers for systems with efficient extended life by having a mix of p cores and e-cores, as those are being marketed to and commonly sought after for gamers? Causing complaints enough to warrant developing an app that will move them to the correct cores after analyzing which app is running?

        Sounds to me more like an excuse to collect 'diagnostic data' for a piece of software that requires that inform

        • I don't know if this is specifically why they worked on it, but Intel have been getting a bad reputation for poor latency on their modern CPUs. The process by which the CPU goes from low power to high power and how threads move from e-Cores to p-Cores is introducing noticeable latency, as in hitching you can experience with your human senses and not just benchmarks. If it becomes a commonly held belief that Intel CPUs introduce latency spikes then the competitive gamers, and most importantly the large conti

  • Or you could just disable the e-cores (Score:3)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @03:02PM (#63953965)

    In most cases these performance gains were already available to people that disabled e-cores or used something like Process Lasso to keep games off the e-cores.

  • This implies Thread Director isn't up to snuff or some games are leaving performance on the table.

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