Just yesterday, we announced to you that Intel had launched a new microcode for your processors Ultra 200S Core which, in conjunction with the latest patches for the Windows operating system, has resolved poor performance issues in games. So we set to work to test for ourselves how effective or not this microcode is, and in this article we show you the results of our own tests.
According to Intel, the new firmware of its processors (which we must install by updating the BIOS of the motherboard) will give us between 3 and 8% performance gains in games, and the promise is that now the new generation processors will work as they should. made when it was released at the end of October.
How to install the new Intel microcode
As we already mentioned in yesterday's article and mentioned in passing a moment ago, the new microcode for the Intel Core Ultra 200S is installed via an update to the board's BIOS mother. So, the first step is to go to the manufacturer's website and see if they already have the new BIOS available; As you can see in the following screenshot, in our case we are using an ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 APEX in the test bench, it is already available. You need to make sure that in the version data it is stated that the microcode 0x114.
So you just need to download the new BIOS and install it. In our case we prefer the typical system of putting the BIOS on a USB stick and updating it from the BIOS itself. It's a simple process that only takes about 5 minutes.
After that, it's time to check if you have the latest Windows updates installed. Since we only turn on the test bench when we are going to use it, we had to wait a bit for all the updates to be downloaded and installed, but after a while we already had Windows 11 completely updated. up to date and ready to operate.
Once these two things are done, according to Intel's instructions, we have already fixed the computer with the gaming performance problem, so it's time to test it.
Gaming performance analysis with an Intel Core Ultra 9 285K
We carried out the performance tests with our usual test bench. Additionally, since it's been about two months since we tested the Core Ultra 9 285K, we repeated the tests just before installing the motherboard BIOS and updating Windows, so we have performance results of precise play before and after.
The equipment used for the test was as follows:
- Intel Core Ultra 9 285K in stock
- ASUS ROG MAXIMUS Z890 APEX
- 2 x 24 GB G.Skill Trident Z5 RGB DDR5 7200 MHz
- Noctua NH-D15 G2
- TeamGroup Cardea A440 Pro 2TB
- Corsair Obsidian 4000D Airflow
- Corsair RM1000x Swift
- PNY GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER
As this is not an exhaustive analysis but we simply wanted to see whether or not there was a performance gain in games using the new Intel microcode, we only tested it on a few games at the time. times. 1440p resolutionmeasuring FPS as always using NVIDIA FCAT and taking average FPS as data. Oh, with the graphics settings at maximum, of course.
Here is the result:
As you can see, the performance gain is not that much. Intel promised between 3 and 8% improvement in FPS in games, and the reality is that according to our tests there are no noticeable changes. But nothing at all, the tenths gained or lost are so marginal that they fall within the margin of error.
The conclusion is therefore this: Intel's new microcode does not solve anything at all. Don't bother installing it.
