Intel has released the first series of updates to improve the performance of Arrow Lake processors in games. The updates should provide "significant performance gains" and restore "full and predictable functionality" of Core Ultra 200 processors, Tom's Hardware reports.
Intel's new line of processors has been criticized by reviewers because the results of user tests did not match the performance figures that Intel shared before the launch.
The update improves the performance of processors to the declared level. To apply it, you need to update the motherboard BIOS firmware and install Windows Update, which also fixes several bugs. Intel recommends that users update the BIOS to the latest version from the motherboard manufacturer and install Windows build 26100.2314 or later.
In January, Intel will release an updated version of the BIOS that will provide even higher performance than originally promised. According to the company, the final update will bring additional performance gains in games.
Intel investigated and found 4 main issues that led to performance problems.
"In the end, there were four major issues that we needed to address, and the fixes for them are actually working right now," says Intel Vice President Robert Hallock.
One of the issues was due to a delayed update that was supposed to optimize Windows' Processor Power Management (PPM) for Intel Core Ultra 200 chips. PPM controls the performance of the processor according to the selected power mode, such as Balanced, High Performance, or Power Saving.
Intel decided to release the PPM update after the processors became available to a wide range of users, instead of doing so before the reviews began. As a result, reviewers were faced with lower performance than was claimed.
Hallock spoke about this and many other things in an interview with HotHardware.
The issues were fixed in Windows 11 update 26100.2161. In addition, Intel reports that Epic Games has resolved a driver compatibility issue that caused a blue screen of death when launching games that support Easy Anti-Cheat, such as Star Wars Outlaws.