Gaming Performance
We are going to focus on the 1080p gaming performance, to look at any differences in CPU performance while gaming. We are using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card with driver version 560.70. All games are being run in their “Ultra” game settings, at native resolution, and with no ray tracing. The results with the Microcode Fix 0x129 BIOS applied are highlighted in blue, while the grey bars are using the BIOS previous to this new one, without the Microcode fix. We will test both the Extreme and Performance Profiles.
Horizon Forbidden West
In Horizon Forbidden West the Intel Core i9-14900K in the Extreme Profile loses about 0.57% of performance applying the new Microcode Fix 0x129, or just 1 FPS. In the Performance Profile, the difference is even less at 0.34% difference.
Alan Wake 2
In Alan Wake 2 you’ll see there is a significant difference between the Extreme and Performance Profiles, to begin with. However, with the Microcode Fix 0x129 applied we are actually seeing a slight increase in performance. With the Microcode Fix 0x129 applied in the Extreme Profile performance goes up by 0.5%. In the Performance Profile performance goes up by 0.4%.
Returnal
In Returnal the Intel Core i9-14900K performs exactly the same with the Microcode Fix 0x129 fix applied in the Extreme Profile and is actually 0.47% faster in the Performance Profile
Avatar Frontiers of Pandora
In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the Intel Core i9-14900K in the Extreme Profile loses about 0.57% performance applying the Microcode Fix 0x129 update. In the Performance Profile, it loses 0.58% performance.