Up to Fifty Percent Performance Gains Have Been Seen in Atlas Fallen after Turning Off the E-cores of an Intel 13900K Processor

Testing has shown that up to fifty percent performance gains can be had in Atlas Fallen simply by turning off E-cores. TechPowerUp discovered the anomaly while preparing its GPU performance article. The system being used features an Intel Core i9-13900K paired with a GeForce RTX 4090. The game was seen saturating all of its E-Cores with maximum loads which is considered an incorrect path of processing since they should be used for offloaded tasks instead of primary tasks.

Per TechPowerUp:

“Normally, when a game saturates all of the E-cores, we don’t interpret it as the game being “aware” of E-cores, but rather “unaware” of them. An ideal Hybrid-aware game should saturate the P-cores for its main workload, and use the E-cores for errands such as processing the audio stack (DSPs from the game), network stack (the game’s unique multiplayer network component), physics, in-flight decompression of assets from the disk, etc., which show up in Task Manager as intermittent, irregular load.”

Testing Results:

It was determined during their testing that turning off the E-cores for the processor could yield better results by forcing the primary processing back onto the P-cores. The increased performance gains were somewhat staggering. Testing was done in an area with an average amount of demand on the CPU and GPU in order to provide a more flatline example of what players could expect as opposed to a more demanding scene that may not represent a more common experience. This approach also allowed a greater examination of the phenomenon by allowing the CPU to reach its fullest potential. It was noted that the game is restricted to 200 FPS.

As seen above up to fifty percent FPS can be gained by disabling the E-cores of an 13900K processor but additionally by using Vulkan instead of DX12. It allowed the flagship processor to boost above 5.00 GHz while getting access to its full L3 cache. It is hoped that perhaps Atlas Fallen‘s developer Deck 13 Interactive can work with Intel to get a patch out to remedy this situation so that owners of the high-end processor can enjoy its benefits to the fullest while playing the new fantasy action RPG. We have more details about Atlas Fallen that can be seen here.

Join the discussion in our forums...