Old / Legacy games on Core i9 13900K

[OxSteve]

Hello gamers !
What follows happened on 13900K, but might also be true with other generation/model of Intel CPU.

I encountered a weird but "known issue" while playing AC Black Flag on my rig ( see specs on the left <===) with a 13900K.
The game was freezing a lot, I mean real freezes like completly stopped, I had to CTRL+ALT+SUPPR and then Cancel to unfreeze the game , it started from the first ingame video. The game was unplayable as it freezed more and more frequently. I was really upset, but I thought : the max gaming core at the time AC BF was out was something like 4, so let s go to BIOS and disable all but 4 cores. And it works great ! I played 2 or 3 hours since, and no more freezes...

Conclusion : If any weird behaviour happen while playing old games, I will consider disabling E Cores , and may be some P Cores. I alsomight noticed better behaviour (stutter wise) without Hyperthreading, but not 100%sure

Hope that can help !

 

[wNotyarD]

Out of curiosity: would using DXVK help without resorting to disabling cores/HT/SMT?

 

[OxSteve]

Out of curiosity: would using DXVK help without resorting to disabling cores/HT/SMT?

Sounds a good idea, pretty sure it will work, and also improve the stuttering ... I never use it so far, but it's a good reason to start ... Will let you know.
EDIT : It's not working, same issue but with Vulkan API. So i tried to run Vulkan with 4 Pcores, and it worked while i plkayed for 15minutes. The freezes otherwise occures really fast, and frequently, so i thinks it s a go, I will post updates if freezes appears while playing long session. BUT, yes there s an interesting but : while enabling/disabling E cores, I noticed an option on my MSI MB BIOS : Legacy Game Compatibility Mode, and with this enable, goodbye the freezes with all cores activatedn, again after a session of 15min...

The way this feature works, is different : You have to enable it first in BIOS, then you can activate it by pressing Scroll Down : If led is on, it s on, otherwise the feature is off.

More interesting : I put it on, play the game => no freeze, I disable it while playing , still no freeze
I put it off, play the game => freezes, I enable it while playing , freezes