Intel Lunar Lake Power And Driver Updates Turbocharge Gaming Performance Up To 33%
That may have been the case, partially, but if so, it wasn't the only problem. Intel informed our hardware news colleagues at TechPowerUp about some buggy power management behavior with the way that site configured the system for its review, which happens to be the same way we reviewed it. The initial version of the MSI Center software for the Lunar Lake platform was designed to set both PL1 and PL2 power limits to the same value when selecting a power limit. This is incorrect, as it apparently leads to suboptimal boost behavior.
After the latest updates, MSI Center will no longer allow users to set both PL1 and PL2 to the same value. Now, they have to be at least 1W apart, although Intel recommends leaving PL2 at the full 37W for best performance. Testing with the latest graphics driver and with PL2 set exactly 1W higher than PL1, TechPowerUp was able to realize performance gains almost as high as 30% in some game benchmarks.
The site says that after these updates, the Claw 8 AI+ is now the "highest-performing device [they] have tested across the board, even surpassing AMD-based devices in our testing suite." Indeed, in that site's testing, it beats out the Steam Deck and the ASUS ROG Ally (as it did in our tests), as well as the Zotac Zone.
With that said, it's not the only outlet claiming big gains after updates for the MSI Claw 8 AI+. ETA PRIME, a tech YouTuber with a taste for small-form-factor and low-power computing, just put out a video titled "The MSI Claw 8 AI Just Got A BIG Performance BOOST!". He goes over the updated Arc graphics driver as well as the power limit changes and finds that he was able to effect a 33% uplift in game performance at the same power preset in Forza Horizon 5.
He doesn't give direct comparison numbers for most of his other tests, but a few of the more impressive results from his video include Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3+4 in 1920×1200, Medium settings at a nearly-locked 60 FPS, and Cyberpunk 2077 on High settings with XeSS 2.0 Frame Generation over 80 FPS. Notably, both of these results were achieved with the machine set to just 17W, well below its maximum potential.
We unfortunately no longer have our MSI Claw 8 AI+ to revisit the machine, but we did say in our original review that were surprised and a little disappointed that Lunar Lake didn't quite live up to the promise of its potent specifications. With a 20-30% bump in gaming performance, that makes Intel's Core Ultra 200V series formidable competition for AMD's Z2 Extreme SoCs, which offer little benefit in most titles versus the Z1 Extreme. We're looking at doing some retesting of Lunar Lake soon, so keep an eye out for new numbers from HotHardware as well.
