Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.2 claims to improve Arrow Lake performance by up to 33%, theoretically matching the Ryzen 7 7800X3D
We have not yet benchmarked the Arrow Lake update, but by our own previous testing, a 33% improvement should yield 7800X3D-like performance.
Seemingly out of nowhere, the devs behind Cyberpunk 2077 have dropped a massive update to the game despite previous claims that support had ended for the title. The new update brings with it an onslaught of gameplay changes and updates, including performance enhancements. Update 2.2 promotes a whopping 33% performance improvement on Core Ultra 200S series CPUs.
Specifically, the devs reveal that CPU threading has been "optimized" on Arrow Lake-based CPUs, which alone is responsible for the 33% performance uplift. Intel previously confirmed that it would fix Arrow Lake-S' through firmware/BIOS updates, but it also revealed that at least some of the architecture's performance issues would be rectified through game-specific updates as well. The latter is what we are now seemingly seeing from Cyberpunk 2077's latest update.
A 33% uplift is massive and would put the Core Ultra 200S series CPUs in a completely different performance category compared to where it is today. In our review of the Core Ultra 9 285K, we found that the CPU, along with its Core Ultra 5 counterpart, were at the bottom of our benchmark chart for Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p Ultra settings (update 2.13), only surpassing the lowly Core i5-14400. In fact, performance was so bad at launch that Intel's four-generation old Core i9-12900K outperformed the two Arrow Lake chips, even with the Arrow Lake CPUs running with ultra-fast 8200MHz CUDIMM memory.
Based on average frame rates from our own Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark, a 33% improvement would catapult the Core Ultra 9 285K from 88.4 FPS average to 117.57 FPS. This would be enough to outperform the Core i9-14900K and effectively tie the Ryzen 7 7800X3D. The same would also be the case for the Core Ultra 5 245K.
That said, an average frame rate of 117.57 FPS would still not be enough to match the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which outputs an average frame rate of 133.1 FPS at stock and 143.9 FPS with PBO enabled in our testing of the game. Regardless, a 33% improvement would put the Arrow Lake chips in a much more competitive light and see them outperform their Intel-based Raptor Lake Refresh predecessors. It will be interesting to see if other major games deliver similar performance-boosting updates in the coming weeks and months.
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Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.
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atomicWAR I'll be curious to see if other titles follow suit with a similar uplifts. It might change my opinion, some, about Intel at the moment. Problem is after the unmitigated disaster that was Raptor Lake it will take a couple of gens before I trust Intel again to deliver a solid product that won't fail two days after the warranty runs out or sooner. Rewind to Sandy Bridge...I never would have thought Intel would be in such a bad spot but here we are. My how times change.Reply -
Geef Now Intel is going to start advertising that their new chips give a up to 33% boost to gaming!Reply -
AkroZ Reply
This update has probably been paid by Intel, you normally don't work on optimizing a game for a specific hardware when you have announced the end of support.80251 said:Kudos to CD Projekt Red for bothering to do this. Intel should give them a medal.
But TH didn't do a new benchmark, thoses changes should affect all CPU.
They most likely reduced the threads memory heap to not be higher than Intel 14th gen specifications (24MB L3 cache for Intel 14600K, 32MB for AMD 9700X), if this is the case then Ryzen 9800X should have similar performances than Ryzen 9800X3D with the new version of Cyberpunk 2077. -
rluker5 1. The previous results aren't too bad for e-cores. andReply
2. I'm glad I turned off auto update so my mods don't stop working. -
thestryker This was one of those outlier titles where something seemed to just be wrong given the amount of regression there was. I wouldn't be surprised if other titles have similar issues with how threading is being done given the lack of HT on ARL. I wonder if any of this is going to be possible to control from Intel's side of things (or Microsoft) as many titles, especially big ones, effectively just get abandoned after a while.Reply
It does seem like there are some fairly extreme outliers still:
Taken from the following video:
y4nC0e32n0sView: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4nC0e32n0s -
umeng2002_2 ReplyAkroZ said:This update has probably been paid by Intel, you normally don't work on optimizing a game for a specific hardware when you have announced the end of support.
But TH didn't do a new benchmark, thoses changes should affect all CPU.
They most likely reduced the threads memory heap to not be higher than Intel 14th gen specifications (24MB L3 cache for Intel 14600K, 32MB for AMD 9700X), if this is the case then Ryzen 9800X should have similar performances than Ryzen 9800X3D with the new version of Cyberpunk 2077.
Unless that specific "hack" is disabled on anything other than Arrow Lake CPUs. -
YSCCC And it would be interesting to see if the same patch just happen to boost RPL and maybe AMD also...Reply
It could be that they've addressed an arrow lake specific bug, or just changed some codes that accidentally just boosted everything else also (maybe to a smaller degree), just happens to market it as an arrow lake fix -
tamalero Reply
I still remember when many programs back then where Pentium D was struggling to fight the Athlon X2..umeng2002_2 said:Unless that specific "hack" is disabled on anything other than Arrow Lake CPUs.
were paid by intel to have optimizations that would stop multithreading if a non intel chip was present. -
thesyndrome Reply
It's possible, but CDPR have been very good about trying to update the game for various hardware over the years for various different companies, like adding SMT for AMD CPUs, or the update before this that added the latest version of FSR with frame gen.AkroZ said:This update has probably been paid by Intel, you normally don't work on optimizing a game for a specific hardware when you have announced the end of support.
Also this Arrow Lake boost doesn't seem to be the centrepiece of the update, but more of an added bonus they threw in; the rest of the update is stuff they teased before, like having Johnny appear in your car, and the ability to customise cars paintwork and "steal" patterns from any car you drive past on the street).
I will fully admit that I am biased towards CDPR after being a fan of theirs since 2009, but I'm too old and cynical to be a fanboy, so whilst I honestly believe that they optimised for Arrow Lake off their own backs without prompting from Intel (based on a history of this kind of optimisation and bug fixing they have done for various games over the years), I do agree that it is a possibility, though I do wonder if Intel would really pay CDPR to update a nearly 5 year old game to improve the FPS on it, rather than focusing their attention (and payments) for more recent games that might be experiencing the same issues.