Gigabyte has released the Gigabyte DRM Fix Tool that allows Gigabyte Z690 motherboard owners to easily and quickly park or unpark the E-cores (Gracemont) inside Alder Lake processors.
It was widely known even before Alder Lake's announcement that the 12th Generation Core processors weren't going to play nice with old games which use DRM. In a nutshell, Alder Lake's hybrid microarchitecture fools DRM solutions, such as Denuvo into thinking that two different systems are simultaneously running the same game with the same key.
Obviously, a simple update from the game developer's behalf is sufficient to fix the compatibility issues with Alder Lake. To be realistic, it's unlikely that developers will go through the hassle of updating all their titles for Alder Lake, especially those that are a couple years old.
Luckily, motherboard vendors have implemented an option to disable the Gracemont cores in Alder Lake. The problem is that the option resides inside the motherboard's BIOS, which could be an overwhelming place for less experience users. It's even a nuisance for veteran users since you have to manually restart the system, enable the option and restart again. It's a process that you have to do endure every time you want to play an old game with a DRM that doesn't like Alder Lake.
The Gigabyte DRM Fix Tool, which weights less than one megabyte and doesn't require installation, facilitates the task to park and unpark the E-cores. The bad news is that the software is exclusive to Gigabyte Z690 motherboards. The only requirement is that the motherboard must be running the latest firmware. You can find the DRM Fix Tool on Gigabyte's website.
Gigabyte Z690 Motherboards
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Motherboard
Firmware
Z690 Aorus Elite AX DDR4
F6a
Z690 Aero D
F5a
Z690 Aero G
F4b
Z690 Aero G DDR4
F6a
Z690 Aorus Elite
F4a
Z690 Aorus Elite AX
F5a
Z690 Aorus Elite DDR4
F5a
Z690 Aorus Master
F6b
Z690 Aorus Pro
F6a
Z690 Aorus Pro DDR4
F6a
Z690 Aorus Tachyon
F3a
Z690 Aorus Ultra
F5a
Z690 Aorus Xtreme
F5a
Z690 Aorus Xtreme WaterForce
F4a
Z690 Gaming X
F5a
Z690 Gaming X DDR4
F6a
Z690I Aorus Ultra
F4a
Z690I Aorus Ultra DDR4
F5a
Z690M Aorus Elite AX DDR4
F5a
Z690M Aorus Elite DDR4
F5a
Z690M DS3H DDR4
F2a
Z690 UD
F5a
Z690 UD AC
F5a
Z690 UD AX
F5a
Z690 UD AX DDR4
F5a
Z690 UD DDR4
F5a
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Zhiye Liu is a news editor, memory reviewer, and SSD tester at Tom’s Hardware. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.
Ahhhh good old DRM protecting little impacting many. I wonder how long until a “right to continued use” will get any traction like right to repair. Granted a different case to right to repair as usually with software you usually don’t own anything other than a license to use it versus a tangible good.
As more and more things become useless or difficult to continue using there should he DMCA or applicable local exemptions to fix/remove broken DRM from abandoned software that devs no longer have interest, financial or otherwise, or ability to update.
