Has some CPU overhead issues at 1440p:
Horizon Zero Dawn (DF quality settings) in benchmark at Meridian where there are many dozens of NPCs. ~74 fps with an occasional stutter which I never see in Nv or AMD cards. My save game is currently not in Meridian and plays 1440p 60Hz VSync perfectly but I usually play this game on other cards at 80fps. I'll try 80 next and head to Meridian in-game to see if it's any different as the benchmark moves thru the city faster than you can run so may exacerbate the problem.
OK played some HZD and headed back to Meridian at uncapped fps as the B580 can't do 80fps locked at 1440p. I never play uncapped as it's always smoother to VSync to 60, 80, 120 or 144Hz, depending. That said, outside the city the game plays perfectly at between 68-100 fps, scene-dependent with no stutters even with 15+ enemies in the action. As tested before, 60fps VSync is also perfect.
Entering Meridian was interesting, as you pass Cut Cliffs and descend into the city CPU use goes up from 40-45% to 70-90% That's pretty far outside Meridian, so the game loads and schedules all those NPCs from quite a ways away. And FPS and GPU use drops, into the 50s with ~85% GPU use, both fluctuating. This is the driver overhead bottleneck. Worst was inside the city just past the market (now following the benchmark path) which dropped into the mid 40s fps with 65% GPU use on rare occasion. Usually getting over 60fps with ~85% usage though. Of course the presentation wasn't smooth though it's much smoother than games with traversal stutter so I guess it could be worse. Could be a lot better, though.
OK doing the same run locked to 60fps VSync works much better, drops from 60 are notably less frequent and only to 54fps with a smoother presentation. CPU use goes up to 92% but usually stays in the 70s. There is an area of notably higher GPU use in the city, the public prayer area with lots of smoke and GPU gets to 100% with 60fps there. Most of the time in the city it was at 58-60fps so this seems a good way to run the game on the B580.
I hope Intel can address this driver use in some updates as it's not stuttery, which would suggest 'broken' to me, instead it's simply too heavy on the CPU and competes for resources in CPU-heavy parts of some games. Trying SotTR in Paititi next but based on the benckmark, it'll likely work fine.
Edit: SotTR works smoothly with no issues at 1440p 80fps (HUB Quality settings) running around the NPC-heavy Paititi and Kuwaq Yaku areas.
