Cyberpunk 2077 is now the first game that can prioritize P-Cores in hybrid CPUs to boost FPS and iron out performance problems. The new feature arrived in patch 2.11 and can be found in the game’s gameplay sub-menu.
The new CPU optimization feature overrides Windows’ core scheduler, forcing Cyberpunk 2077 to run on the CPU’s performance cores — no matter what. We took the new feature for a spin, but we ran into some performance problems (which we’ll explain in detail at the end).
The feature is called Hybrid CPU Utilization and it has two modes: one is an automatic setting that allows the OS to do all the heavy lifting, while the other is a “prioritize P-Cores” setting that forces the game to run on the P-Cores only.
The idea behind this new setting is smart, and should — in theory — resolve scheduling issues users might have with the game. Improper core utilization on chips with performance and efficiency cores can cause major performance issues in CPU-bound games if the game is accidentally run on the CPU’s E-Cores (which are, in most cases, much slower than its P-Cores).
Performance issues with Windows’ scheduler aren’t very widespread, but it isn’t perfect. There are times when tasks will get loaded onto the wrong cores — even on Intel’s hybrid CPUs, which come with Thread Director. Having a manual override in-game can potentially fix this problem without the user needing to jump through hoops and do things like disable the E-Cores in BIOS.
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Unfortunately, Cyberpunk 2077’s implementation of the Hybrid CPU Utilization setting is… not great. We tested it using a Raptor Lake i9-13900K and an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super, running the game on medium settings with DXR ray tracing enabled, and found serious micro-stuttering problems when the feature was turned on. The performance disparity was so great it was clear there was something wrong.
It may not be a problem with Cyberpunk 2077, however — Intel’s Thread Director technology can go haywire when users manually set CPU affinities using third-party software or task manager. If Cyberpunk 2077’s setting is affinity-based, Thread Director could be the actual culprit — but we can’t be sure. We aren’t the only ones facing issues; users on Reddit have reported the same behavior on their systems.
It is a shame that Cyberpunk 2077’s new CPU optimization feature is encountering issues on launch, as the idea behind the new setting is excellent and could theoretically save many people from performance problems related to unoptimized core scheduling. Hopefully CD Projekt Red will get this issue sorted out, regardless of who’s at fault.
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