Intel reveals the games that don't work with Alder Lake -- and a temporary fix

midian182

Posts: 9,662   +121
Staff member
In brief: While it looks as if Intel’s Alder Lake processors will finally give AMD’s Ryzen chips some serious competition, certain games don't work with team blue’s new CPUs. But patches are coming, and there is a workaround that involves disabling Alder Lake’s efficiency cores.

We’ve been very impressed by what we’ve seen of Alder Lake so far, awarding both the Core i9-12900K and Core i7-12700KF scores of 90. The chips offer excellent gaming performance, too, but early adopters will find that some titles, including Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, won’t boot due to Digital Rights Management (DRM) software issues.

Intel explains that the problem stems from DRM software incorrectly recognizing Alder Lake’s efficient-cores (E-cores) as another system. This can prevent games from launching, cause crashes during gameplay, or shut them down unexpectedly.

Intel has released a list of games impacted by the Alder Lake/DRM issue; more titles are affected if you are running Windows 10 instead of Windows 11. The company says it will be releasing a patch with the Windows 11 update sometime in mid-November to address the games highlighted in bold, and it is working with developers on a fix for the remaining games.

Windows 11

  • Anthem
  • Bravely Default 2
  • Fishing Sim World
  • Football Manager 2019
  • Football Manager Touch 2019
  • Football Manager 2020
  • Football Manager Touch 2020
  • Legend of Mana
  • Mortal Kombat 11
  • Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 and 2
  • Warhammer I
  • Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
  • Far Cry Primal
  • Fernbus Simulator
  • For Honor
  • Lost in Random
  • Madden 22
  • Maneater
  • Need for Speed – Hot Pursuit Remastered
  • Sea of Solitude
  • Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order
  • Tourist Bus Simulator

Windows 10

  • All of the above games, plus
  • Ace Combat 7
  • Assassins Creed Odyssey
  • Assassins Creed Origins
  • Code Vein
  • eFootball 2021
  • F1 2019
  • Far Cry New Dawn
  • FIFA 19
  • FIFA 20
  • Football Manager 2021
  • Football Manager Touch 2021
  • Ghost Recon Breakpoint
  • Ghost Recon Wildlands
  • Immortals Fenyx Rising
  • Just Cause 4
  • Life is Strange 2
  • Madden 21
  • Monopoly Plus
  • Need For Speed Heat
  • Scott Pilgrim vs The World
  • Shadow of the Tomb Raider
  • Shinobi Striker
  • Soulcalibur VI
  • Starlink
  • Team Sonic Racing
  • Total War Saga - Three Kingdoms
  • Train Sim World
  • Train Sim World 2
  • Wolfenstein Youngblood

Luckily, there is a way to avoid the issue before the patches roll out. It involves enabling Legacy Game Compatibility Mode, which will place the E-cores in a standby mode while playing games. Here’s how to enable the feature:

1. Power-up system and enter system BIOS setup.

2. Enable switch Legacy Game Compatibility Mode to ON (one-time only) in BIOS.

3. Save BIOS setup changes and exit.

4. Boot to OS.

5. Toggle Keyboard Scroll Lock key ON.

6. Launch affected game title.

7. Toggle Keyboard Scroll Lock key OFF after ending game title.

Permalink to story.

 
Sounds like that should be enabled by default in the bios. Especially if it doesn't effect background tasks while the legacy game is running.
 
So much fail, it's Intel being Intel again.

Imagine how many more things they have screwed up but we don't know yet.

It's not Intel's fault. It's because of DRM like denuvo.
If these games had already gotten rid of denuvo, this would not be an issue.
Or better, if companies would stop putting denuvo in their games, we would not have performance issues, stutter and incompatibility problems with new hardware.
 
Wasn't intel really interested in pushing the fact that they were working with Denuvo to mitigate DRM performance issues on these new CPUs? I distinctly recall seeing that.
 
Waiting for the software fixes makes far more sense.

Yes it does if it turns off the cores for everything while playing the game. If it just hides the E cores from any incompatible legacy game and allows them to be used by everything else it does not. I wonder if we can get a clarification on that?
 
Yes it does if it turns off the cores for everything while playing the game. If it just hides the E cores from any incompatible legacy game and allows them to be used by everything else it does not. I wonder if we can get a clarification on that?
lol That's way too much work for a workaround. Just wait for the fixes.
 
Once again DRM rearing its ugly head.
Wasn't intel really interested in pushing the fact that they were working with Denuvo to mitigate DRM performance issues on these new CPUs? I distinctly recall seeing that.
They knew about it and released documentation to that face on october 18th.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/intel/alder-lake-drm-incompatibilities

"Intel is working with leading DRM providers such as Denuvo to make sure their solutions support new platforms"

"It elaborates further on potential incompatibilities with DRM by suggesting affected parties contact their provider and confirm whether its digital rights management solution supports hybrid architectures."
 
LOL .. it just hit me ... Now we need to wait for patches for hardware to go along with the patches for games that launch crippled and terrible like CP2077 ...oh what a world.

As for the comment that the DRM is the issue ... disagree. Otherwise intel would punt the issue to them and make a blog post about the glorious leader ... I mean the amazing silicon here to save us from evil AMD. Intel muffed the scheduler on how the threads present themselves. And they knew about it before launch.

**This is starting to feel like the Pentium-3 1ghz cpu release alllll over again...**

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-admits-problems-pentium-iii-1,235.html

Alder OBV wont stop shipping .. but they knew this thread issue with DRM existed.

*clarification the ref to p3-1.15 ghz is that this ARCH was wayyyyyyy to rushed like it was when Thunderbird hit 1ghz and cleaned intel's clock for the better half of a year and their response was to overclock the p3 and ship it.
 
Last edited:
This not intel fault but Denuvo/DRM

So much fail, it's Intel being Intel again.

Imagine how many more things they have screwed up but we don't know yet.

Why blame intel and not DRM

And intel did not screw up.... Denuvo/DRM won't allow the game to launch if it detects two types of cores.... The issue is with DRM and it need to be patched.. I fail to see how intel screw up


Hybrid cores suck. This trick by Intel is very problematic. I want full real cores only.

Except that Hybrid cores has better performance within same die size and power

8 E cores has die size as 2 P cores..... In other words, 10 P cores will same size as 8 P + 8 E cores, but 10 P cores perform a lot worse in multi-threaded

Even AMD will use Hybrid cores in the future (zen5)
 
Last edited:
All new systems have problems. My R7 5800X had USB issues where USB drives would cut out randomly until it was patched, id get sound cutting out, or my keyboard would deluminate (google it, it was definitely a common issue). I also experienced the infamous Ryzen "hangs". However its been 11 months now and all the issues have been patched out via BIOS updates. It will be the same with Alder lake. Just yeah, ensure you keep your BIOS up to date, should go without saying really.

However I never noticed the Windows 11 latency issue and my use case is incredibly sensitive to single core performance so you would think I would. But that got patched out extremely quickly by MS.

 
:facepalm: sIntel hubris - still?? IMO, this sounds about right for sIntel. The e-cores (purely there just to play the core count game because P-cores, instead of E-cores, would turn their cpus into electric stoves) comes back to bite them in the E-A$$. 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Maybe, just maybe, they will learn some day that the shell game scam is not working for them.
 
lol That's way too much work for a workaround. Just wait for the fixes.

You literally just have to press scroll lock before launching the game .... It seriously can't be THAT hard.

Sure a oke time bios switch flip is required but you can't really consider that part or the workaround in a day 2 day basis.Il

It's a simple effective solution and one I would have no problem with and am just glad there is a solution ahead of software fixes that may or may not actually come.
 
:facepalm: sIntel hubris - still?? IMO, this sounds about right for sIntel. The e-cores (purely there just to play the core count game because P-cores, instead of E-cores, would turn their cpus into electric stoves) comes back to bite them in the E-A$$. 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Maybe, just maybe, they will learn some day that the shell game scam is not working for them.
Using "sintel" is so cringe..
 
Back