Intel's troubled Arrow Lake processors have hit another setback as the company's latest firmware update appears to be degrading gaming performance instead of improving it. The update, which was meant to address ongoing issues, has left many users and industry experts frustrated.
Recent benchmarks shared by hardware testing group CapFrameX reveal that Intel's new microcode version 0x114 is causing substantial performance drops in gaming applications. Most notably, Cyberpunk 2077 has seen frame rates plummet by approximately 20 percent compared to the previous microcode version.
The problems don't stop there. Memory latency has also taken a hit, increasing from around 69 nanoseconds to 80 nanoseconds after the update. This development directly contradicts Intel's promise of performance improvements with the new firmware.
Intel had previously identified five distinct issues affecting the Arrow Lake CPU line and pledged to resolve them by January 2025. The company plans to provide a detailed explanation of these problems during CES 2025.
The tech giant has attributed the poor real-world performance to missing software components during review testing, specifically pointing to the absence of the Performance & Power Management (PPM) package. According to Intel, this package is necessary for optimal thread scheduling in gaming scenarios.
As motherboard manufacturers continue rolling out new firmware based on the problematic microcode, the Arrow Lake launch is increasingly being viewed as one of Intel's most challenging product releases. The new Core Ultra CPUs are already struggling to compete with both AMD's current offerings and Intel's own previous generation processors.
This ongoing situation raises questions about Intel's quality control processes and their ability to deliver on performance promises, especially as users find themselves facing what appears to be a performance downgrade rather than an improvement.