Intel recently provided a field report over the known and ongoing issues with its latest Core Ultra 200S Series desktop processor lineup, Arrow Lake-S. In total, the chipmaker narrowed down performance issues to five distinct points.
The five issues Intel discovered are as listed below:
- Missing Performance & Power Management (PPM) package.
- Intel Application Performance Optimizer (APO) could not take effect.
- BSODs when attempting to launch game titles utilizing the Easy Anti-Cheat service.
- Select performance settings misconfigured on reviewer or early enabling BIOSes.
- New BIOS performance optimizations.
The root cause of the missing PPM package was due to Intel incorrectly scheduling a Windows Update package for user/retail availability, and not reviewer availability. This caused unusual scheduling behaviours with the Core Ultra 200S CPUs.
The second issue, where the APO could not take effect, is linked to the first issue. due to the missing PPM, the APO could not take effect, which in turn causes Core Ultra 200S processors not to see any performance gains when testing APO on enabled titles.
The third issue found with the Core Ultra 200S Series was users experiencing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) when launching Easy anti-cheat titles. This was narrowed down to a known issue between Windows 11 24H2 and an April 2024 driver.
The fourth issue revolves around select performance settings being misconfigured in reviewer BIOSes. This resulted in “abberantly high memory latency”, high run-to-run stdev for dynamic or unpredictable workloads; no performance uplift for games that benefit from PCIe Resizable BAR; no performance uplift for games that benefit from Intel APO.
The fifth and final issue that plagued the Core Ultra 200S Series relates to BIOS Performance Optimisations, which requires a new firmware image update via an Intel microcode version 0x114 and Intel CSME Firmware Kit 19.0.0.1854v2.2, which will be release at a later date.
As for the other four issues, Intel has resolved them. The first two have been resolved via the Windows 11 build 26100.2161, while the third issue was resolved with Epic Games having distributed an updated Easy Anti-Cheat driver. The fourth issue was fixed with current Z890 BIOS releases.
(Source: Intel)
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