MSI solved one of Alder Lake's biggest drawback.

mickyflinn · 10 Nov 2021 at 11:59

Games that are having trouble with the big core little core archetrcture can now be played.

MSI solved one of Intel Alder Lake's biggest drawback with a bios tweak .

The workaround was found first by PCMag, which detailed how it works. Some Asus and MSI motherboards have a BIOS setting called "Legacy Game Compatibility Mode", which you need to turn on. Then, once you launch a game, simply press the Scroll Lock key and the game should run.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www....der-lakes-biggest-drawbacks-with-a-bios-tweak

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 12:13

The fix is to disable half the CPU. Amazing job MSI. Do you get a 50% refund?

scubes · 10 Nov 2021 at 12:33

jigger said:
The fix is to disable half the CPU. Amazing job MSI. Do you get a 50% refund?

Lmao cracker mate

mickyflinn · 10 Nov 2021 at 12:40

jigger said:
The fix is to disable half the CPU. Amazing job MSI. Do you get a 50% refund?

Thats via Intel

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 12:52

mickyflinn said:
Thats via Intel

Key logger. Receive payment every scroll lock input.

When I read the thread I was expecting MSI had fixed the Alder lake memory configuration issues or something.

VincentHanna · 10 Nov 2021 at 14:55

I'd rather the devs patch the games, rather than having to enable the modern equivalent of 'Turbo' mode and limiting your CPU performance if you forget to turn it off.

If anybody remembers those buttons on PC's? They slowed down your PC to allow you to play older games without them running too quickly.

alphaomega16 · 10 Nov 2021 at 15:22

Another fix would to just get rid of DRM on them.

SKILL · 10 Nov 2021 at 15:23

VincentHanna said:
I'd rather the devs patch the games, rather than having to enable the modern equivalent of 'Turbo' mode and limiting your CPU performance if you forget to turn it off.

If anybody remembers those buttons on PC's? They slowed down your PC to allow you to play older games without them running too quickly.

Who pays the devs for patching long EOL'd games (or software in general) just because Intel went and broke stuff...

And we say broken, but actually it's just slow. The SW is fine the HW is the 'issue'.

I may be more irritated because I'm a Software Engineer and the number of times I've been asked "Can't you just workaround it in software?" by a hardware engineer is just silly

Purgatory · 10 Nov 2021 at 15:46

VincentHanna said:
I'd rather the devs patch the games, rather than having to enable the modern equivalent of 'Turbo' mode and limiting your CPU performance if you forget to turn it off.

If anybody remembers those buttons on PC's? They slowed down your PC to allow you to play older games without them running too quickly.

Coming soon with all Intel cpus a free button (case mods or new cases coming soon), I loved them turbo mode buttons as everyone thought they were making their pcs faster by using it and not realising it slowed it down for old applications/games. The worst ones were the ones without the display to let you know how fast your cpu was running and people clicked them all the time.. Ones with display were clear and made you realise if clicked the speed went down not up, but then you did have some that worked the other way round :cry:

, so was just damn confusing sometimes depending on pc brand.

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 15:57

VincentHanna said:
I'd rather the devs patch the games, rather than having to enable the modern equivalent of 'Turbo' mode and limiting your CPU performance if you forget to turn it off.

If anybody remembers those buttons on PC's? They slowed down your PC to allow you to play older games without them running too quickly.

But who is going to bother for such a non existent users base. Let’s spend a fortune to optimise for 7 Alder lake users.

DeliciousStorage · 10 Nov 2021 at 16:13

SKILL said:
Who pays the devs for patching long EOL'd games (or software in general) just because Intel went and broke stuff...

And we say broken, but actually it's just slow. The SW is fine the HW is the 'issue'.

I may be more irritated because I'm a Software Engineer and the number of times I've been asked "Can't you just workaround it in software?" by a hardware engineer is just silly

This is completely backwards, it is the DRM that is and always was faulty, there just wasn't any hardware around at the time to expose it.

Kelt · 10 Nov 2021 at 16:25

DeliciousStorage said:
This is completely backwards, it is the DRM that is and always was faulty, there just wasn't any hardware around at the time to expose it.

Agreed.

SKILL · 10 Nov 2021 at 16:38

DeliciousStorage said:
This is completely backwards, it is the DRM that is and always was faulty, there just wasn't any hardware around at the time to expose it.

Actually reading into it a bit more I'm wrong... It's not just 'working but slow' in some cases.

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 16:47

DeliciousStorage said:
This is completely backwards, it is the DRM that is and always was faulty, there just wasn't any hardware around at the time to expose it.

That’s going to expensive for Intel to fix.

DeliciousStorage · 10 Nov 2021 at 16:49

SKILL said:
I disagree.

When the DRM was developed there was no concept of 'efficiency' cores, all x86 cores were the same. Hell there wasn't even the ability to specify/request that the OS schedules the software onto the performance cores. So how would they develop against/to an API that didn't exist?

Intel came along and added two tiers of cores to their processors, they worked with Microsoft so the scheduler knew the difference and could allow software to have some knowledge/control. All that after the software was written.

You're essentially saying that if Intel release Raptor Lake as a purely ARM ISA processor, breaking 99% of Windows software, that the software that no longer worked 'is and always was faulty'...

No, I'm not essentially saying that at all, that's a bizarre way to interpret it. Alder lake is an x86 architecture that executes the instructions correctly and as expected. The DRM makes an incorrect assumption about the hardware which is terrible programming practice, and closes the game as a result. The DRM is clearly at fault here and I'm very surprised that you as a software engineer don't see that.

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 17:25

DeliciousStorage said:
No, I'm not essentially saying that at all, that's a bizarre way to interpret it. Alder lake is an x86 architecture that executes the instructions correctly and as expected. The DRM makes an incorrect assumption about the hardware which is terrible programming practice, and closes the game as a result. The DRM is clearly at fault here and I'm very surprised that you as a software engineer don't see that.

Alder lake is two very different X86 cores meant for different workloads. Intel’s API layer should deal with that.

james.miller · 10 Nov 2021 at 17:40

It's not necessasarily a fault if the DRM doesnt pick up modern mixed core CPUs correctly. Prior to alderlake, was there even a way to identify such CPUs? That's like blaiming vendors for not supporting features of the latest hdmi, or pcie, or atx spec when those specs weren't even announced when the hardware was produced. You cant plan for every possible future outcome. Not unless you're Dr.Strange, anyway.

DeliciousStorage · 10 Nov 2021 at 17:48

jigger said:
Alder lake is two very different X86 cores meant for different workloads. Intel’s API layer should deal with that.

Yeah, they are still both x86 though. From what I read the DRM incorrectly believes it is running on two different systems and closes the game because it is not expected behavior.

james.miller said:
It's not necessasarily a fault if the DRM doesnt pick up modern mixed core CPUs correctly. Prior to alderlake, was there even a way to identify such CPUs? That's like blaiming vendors for not supporting features of the latest hdmi, or pcie, or atx spec when those specs weren't even announced when the hardware was produced. You cant plan for every possible future outcome. Not unless you're Dr.Strange, anyway.

It's not the DRM's fault that it doesn't recognize a new CPU, but it is DRM's fault if it closes the game because it doesn't recognize it.

jigger · 10 Nov 2021 at 17:58

DeliciousStorage said:
Yeah, they are still both x86 though. From what I read the DRM incorrectly believes it is running on two different systems and closes the game because it is not expected behavior.

It's not the DRM's fault that it doesn't recognize a new CPU, but it is DRM's fault if it closes the game because it doesn't recognize it.

One is missing hardware. Alder lake was always going to suffer because of its design.

SKILL · 10 Nov 2021 at 18:16

DeliciousStorage said:
No, I'm not essentially saying that at all, that's a bizarre way to interpret it. Alder lake is an x86 architecture that executes the instructions correctly and as expected. The DRM makes an incorrect assumption about the hardware which is terrible programming practice, and closes the game as a result. The DRM is clearly at fault here and I'm very surprised that you as a software engineer don't see that.

After posting I did a bit more research and saw my error and edited my post but obviously you saw it first, oops

I was assuming the issue was solely that software (wasn't just thinking of DRM) was 'just' being scheduled purely onto the E-cores and running but far slower than it 'should', this does happen (and is an Intel problem) but the issues with DRM specifically are indeed more of a faulty assumption from the DRM itself and not really Intels fault, as you said.