Tuesday, November 14th 2023
Intel Confirms APO Feature Not Coming to 13th Gen and 12th Gen Core Processors
Intel Application Performance Optimization (APO) is a unique feature that sets 14th Gen Core "Raptor Lake Refresh" processors apart from 13th Gen "Raptor Lake," despite the two being practically the same microarchitecture. APO is software-based, application-specific processor optimization that is found to offer an up to 16% performance boost in "Metro Exodus," and an up to 13% boost in "Rainbow Six: Siege." These are the only two games that Intel has released APO optimizations for, and for now, APO is only supported on the Core i9-14900K and i9-14900KF. Hardware Unboxed learned that while the company might bring APO to more 14th Gen Core processor models in the near future; it won't make it to 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" and older 12th Gen Core "Alder Lake."
APO is an extension of Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology framework that provides a greater degree of handholding for the OS scheduler, to give a specific application the best possible allocation of hardware system resources. For Intel to release APO profiles to new games, it needs extensive testing and validation specific to processor models and the applications themselves, which is probably why the company is limiting APO to only its current 14th Gen processors, and only specific processor models within the lineup. You can catch the Hardware Unboxed presentation with their testing of APO on the two supported titles, and Intel's statement, in the source link below.
Source:
Hardware Unboxed (YouTube)
APO is an extension of Intel Dynamic Tuning Technology framework that provides a greater degree of handholding for the OS scheduler, to give a specific application the best possible allocation of hardware system resources. For Intel to release APO profiles to new games, it needs extensive testing and validation specific to processor models and the applications themselves, which is probably why the company is limiting APO to only its current 14th Gen processors, and only specific processor models within the lineup. You can catch the Hardware Unboxed presentation with their testing of APO on the two supported titles, and Intel's statement, in the source link below.
75 Comments on Intel Confirms APO Feature Not Coming to 13th Gen and 12th Gen Core Processors
I've always suspected that the new architecture with its asymmetric design makes thread scheduling horribly complex and in most situations non-optimal. You can keep most of the threads happy most of the time, but you can't keep all of the threads happy all of the time!
This new Intel "Thread Director profiling" utility is a proof of that.
Anyway that said 12th gen had smaller E core cache size per cluster, but also didn't have individual multiplier for E cores within a cluster either so wouldn't work as well dynamically in terms of reducing power and heat output nor would the share cache latency uplift be nearly the same in terms of effectiveness. In the case of 13th it wouldn't be too different. The only minor difference for 14th gen relative to 13th gen is base/boost would be a little different and thus behave bit more effectively, but the cache is the same. In the case of 14700K relative to 13700K it naturally would be more effective though due to the additional set of E cores.
The bottom line is tasks don't always benefit from more multi-threading and don't all have heavy CPU utilization. Certain tasks are more latency driven or just have a certain threshold of interment latency driven points where cleverly utilizing the E cores better makes sense and would lower latency and temps to improve turbo performance and overall performance. It seems like that is what APO is doing. Are they doing things beyond that scope of that I have no idea, but it stands to reason their leveraging what they can in whatever ways they can to raise performance, reduce heat, and drop power consumption.
It’s not even “only supported by the 14th gen” it’s “only supported by two CPUs”. I see no value in it.
What they very clearly demonstrated to the market is that those shenanigans are alive and well -- and they did so at almost no benefit to sales or their product stack. It's basically all downside.
Reviews are turned off at the store for me... probably because it was 1 star. lol. What a PR blunder.
Vote with your brain and wallet people.
One could expect Intel will get on some schedule, as adding one new game in the supported list a day, but the number 2 has not changed since introduction. Are they stuck for some reason? Is something broken? Have they problem finding games which can be improved? What is going on?
@ INTEL
This is shady, dishonest, borderline unethical crap. :shadedshu:
Morons..
I saw that based upon how I suspect APO operates based on post I had made on TPU around E cores shared cache and intelligently utilizing it to reduce latency, but also has a side benefit of dropping power consumption and temperatures as well that translates to power savings and/or higher performance in tandem with boosting algorithms. It could provide higher peak performance for a individual cooling restraints or longer boost duration for higher sustained performance. In either case it's a net positive.
Basically suspect Intel has mimicked disabling of CCX cores on AMD side to provide uplift within the E core cluster. It's a bit like treating each core within a cluster of E cores as a CCX if it operates as I suspect it does and then cleverly dynamically enabling or disabling them based upon the workload. It's not going to to provide performance uplift for the same reasons, but in lighter workloads that are more latency and thermal sensitive it can show positive gains while also increasing efficiency.