Intel has added some new games to the list of supported titles for its APO tech – including some big names like Fortnite and CyberPunk 2077 – as well as bringing its latest Arrow Lake desktop CPUs (Core Ultra 200S) into the fold.
APO (Application Performance Optimization) is a feature that boosts frame rates with supported games and processors, optimizing thread scheduling, and essentially helping those games make better use of efficiency cores. The latter are the cores which are present in Intel’s hybrid CPUs (those since Alder Lake, the 12th-gen family for Team Blue).
TechSpot noticed that Intel has introduced APO support for its Core Ultra 9 285K and Core Ultra 7 265K (and 265KF). In the case of the Core Ultra 5 245K, the other Arrow Lake CPU released as part of Intel’s first arrivals, this has fewer than eight performance cores, so it runs a more limited take (‘Advanced Mode’), but you’ll still get some benefit. (Any CPU must have at least six cores, and be a ‘K’ series unlocked chip, to use APO, we should note).
As for the new games that are now supported, they include Fortnite and CyberPunk 2077 as mentioned, as well as other big hitters like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike 2.
The full list is as follows:
Company of Heroes 3Counter-Strike 2Cyberpunk 2077Dota 2FortniteNaraka: BladepointRiftbreakerShadow of the Tomb RaiderTiny Tina’s WonderlandsTotal War: PharaohTotal War: Three KingdomsTotal War: Warhammer 3
(Image credit: Getty Images / RyanKing999)
Analysis: A needed boost in a tough battle against AMD
Another dozen games, and some pretty high-profile titles at that, being added to the Intel APO family is definitely good to see. With Arrow Lake, though, it could be argued that Team Blue needs to pull out some more stops on the gaming front, so these fresh APO introductions are seemingly part of that effort.
In case you missed it, Arrow Lake has rather disappointed PC gamers with its generational performance gains – it pushes more for efficiency, than raw performance – something that leaks flagged up for us ahead of time.
Indeed, Intel readily admitted that Core Ultra 200S CPUs are 5% slower than AMD’s 7000X3D chips in gaming – and remember, the Ryzen 9800X3D is supposedly about to arrive, packing a serious gen-on-gen uplift, if some rumors are correct.
These are tricky times for Intel, really, especially given the recent debacle over 13th-gen and 14th-gen processors which suffered from instability gremlins (that we should note are not a problem for Arrow Lake CPUs).
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