Intel Adds 15 Titles To APO To Boost Arrow Lake Gaming Performance

When you embark on a paradigm shift like Intel's heterogeneous CPUs, you are necessarily going to cause some weirdness with software that doesn't expect such a configuration. Enter Intel's Application Performance Optimization, or APO. This feature works by manipulating fine-grained processor performance values through Intel's Dynamic Tuning Technology to exactly suit the performance demands of particular applications.

We tested APO back when it was first released in 2023 alongside the 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh processors, and found that while performance gains at typical GPU-limited settings aren't drastic, it can still provide a significant benefit to performance when games are CPU-limited. It's a real performance boost just for installing some extra Intel software on your PC, and that ain't too bad.

The biggest downside to Intel APO is that it only supported a handful of games. Some of the titles were fairly popular, like Counter-Strike 2 and Dota 2. Other titles were stranger selections, such as Strange Brigade and It Takes Two—both of which are perfectly fine games, but peculiar picks for some of the first games to get game-specific optimizations for your CPU.


Now, Intel has added fifteen more games to the APO feature. Once again, some of them are very popular, including 7 Days to Die, Cities Skylines, God of War (2018), and World of Warships. Some of the other titles are more niche, like excellent indie base-builder Dyson Sphere Program, the underwhelming Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and the reviled Kerbal Space Program 2. Here's the full list of new apps supported by APO:

• 7 Days to Die
• Assetto Corsa
• Cities: Skylines
• Delta Force: Black Hawk Down
• Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
• Dyson Sphere Program
• EA Sports FC 24
• God of War
• Kerbal Space Program 2
• Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• The Callisto Protocol
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World of Warships
• 蜀山初章 (China only)

Intel admits that the gains from APO are pretty modest this time around, likely because it tested the games on High settings instead of Low settings, but there are still some pretty significant bumps. Cities: Skylines apparently sees a 9% uplift in average FPS, while Dyson Sphere Program enjoys an 11% bump. The largest gain is supposedly in Metro Exodus: Enhanced Edition, which gains 14%.


Interestingly, Intel points out that some of the largest gains are actually in 1% low framerates. These are the worst 1% of frame times, representing the nadir of game performance in a particular title. 1% lows often reflect when a game is momentarily bottlenecked by the CPU or, more often, by memory latency. APO apparently increases 1% low framerates by as much as 21% in Dyson Sphere Program, which is fantastic.

There's a completely valid argument to be made that a CPU shouldn't require game-specific optimizations to deliver its best performance. On the other hand, as both hardware and software components become ever more complicated, this sort of thing is likely to become ever more common. Kudos to Intel for trying to make sure its customers have the best possible experience, in any case.

If you want to make sure you have APO enabled, you simply need to have a "K" or "HX" series processor from the 14th-gen Core or Core Ultra 200 (Arrow Lake) series, get the latest BIOS and chipset drivers for your motherboard, and make sure you have the Intel DTT driver installed. Said driver will usually be supplied by your motherboard vendor, so check your board's download page to find it. There's also an APO app in the Microsoft Store that lets you toggle this functionality on a game-specific basis if you desire.