Intel To Bring Game-Boosting APO Optimizations To Its 12th & 13th Gen Desktop CPUs

Intel has stated its plans to bring APO (Application Performance Optimization) tech support to its older 12th & 13th Gen CPUs.

Intel had previously stated that its Application Performance Optimization feature or APO in short was only designed for certain 14th Gen (Raptor Lake Refresh) CPUs, mainly the unlocked "K" chips. The technology enabled performance boosts of up to 32% in certain games while the company was officially listing up to 16% and 13% gains for its 14th Gen K-CPUs in titles such as Metro Exodus and Rainbow Six: Siege, respectively.

The technology mainly enabled better utilization of the E-cores which were not only utilized within games but also ran faster when they were being tasked. However, when we tried to run the feature on older Intel's 12th and 13th Gen CPUs, the application gave an error message stating that the CPU did not support APO technology. This was met with some backlash since Intel's 12th & 13th Gen CPUs shared very similar traits in terms of architecture and design with the E-Core on all CPU SKUs being based on the same Gracemont core architecture.

Well, Intel has now said that they have plans to bring APO (Application Performance Optimization) feature support to some 12th and 13th Gen K-Series CPUs too. Each CPU needs to be optimized independently so some work needs to be done for each chip and Intel has countless of those in each generation. So the company seems to be targeting mainly the K-series CPUs for now. There are a lot of gamers running Intel's K-Series CPUs that are part of the 12th & 13th Gen family so this is good news for them.

Intel also announced a host of new titles that would get APO support during CES 2024. These include Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, F1 22, Strange Brigade (Vulkan), World War Z, Dirt 5 & World of Warcraft, these are among the list of 14 games. In addition to the 12th and 13th Gen Desktop CPUs, Intel will also be adding its 14th Gen Raptor Lake-HX CPUs to the list of supported chips for APO. A BIOS update will be required to fully enable APO on existing 600 and 700-series motherboards with 12th & 13th Gen CPUs.

It finally looks like that Intel is on the right path with APO. The feature is a great addition for gamers as it fully utilizes the E-Core horsepower that these products pack and we expect Intel to further fine-tune performance for existing and older hybrid chips. Hopefully, we will also see the support extended to the Non-K CPUs which make up the bulk of gaming sales for the company.

News Source: PCGamer