Intel APO increases gaming performance by 31% on 14th Gen CPUs

The 14th generation Intel processors were launched a few days ago, and despite the shy generation jump, the new generation brought interesting features to the user. One such technology is APO (Intel Application Optimization), which can increase performance by up to 31% in titles such as Rainbow Six: Siege.

To test Intel’s new tool, Reddit user LightMoisture ran more in-depth APO benchmarks on the only two games that currently have official support: Metro exodus that it Rainbow Six: Siege. The result was a jump in performance of 24% and 31%, respectively, when the function was activated.

Coyly introduced by Intel, APO actually works alongside another function that has already been around since 12th generation Alder Lake. In general, application optimization is an enhanced version of Thread Director, which directs processes to the best available cores to perform that task – all in real time. This is an improvement in technology, and is specifically available for some specific games.

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APO was not easy to use

To achieve these results, the user needed to activate BIOS options such as Intel Dynamic Tunning and underwent a “tedious” and complex testing process. It seems that some people are having problems using the tool, especially regarding incompatibility with some motherboards.

For the tests, an Intel Core i9-14900K and GeForce RTX 4090 were used, showing a system powerful enough to achieve this performance increase. However, it should be noted that APO is an exclusive feature for Intel Core Raptor Lake Refresh processors and there appear to be no plans to bring it to previous generations.

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From initial tests, Intel’s application optimization appears to be an attractive feature for users. However, the technology still needs to expand to include more games if Intel really wants to implement this option. As for the future, with Arrow Lake processors, it is not difficult to imagine more improvements and solutions like this, especially with the help of artificial intelligence.