None of the listed games would benefit from an i9 (or even an i7 for that matter).

Game ran like ass when I tried it and the overall graphics are decent at best tho.

I tried Process Lasso with core parking disabled and “efficiency mode off” which leads to games actually using all the available P cores and E cores (many games still won’t use E cores). Feels better in some games, but APO only seems to enable one E core per cluster, so maybe that is even better.

I know for a fact that games can still use E cores if you force efficiency mode off with Process Lasso. If you want to be absolutely sure that a game does not use E cores, you must use CPU sets or affinity.

Yes, but that’s not what I said. Some games will use E cores when I disable core parking and force efficiency mode off. So “efficiency mode” isn’t just a switch that controls whether E cores are being used, it’s more like a “prefer P cores” or “prefer E cores” setting, but a process can still use both when it seems necessary. It definitely behaves differently than stock settings or E cores off.

I tried it in Metro Exodus yesterday and the game used the E cores. I tried a different game (Dead by Daylight) which didn’t use the E cores at all with the same settings.

If I use Process Lasso with “Performance Mode” (no core parking) and I force efficiency mode off for all games, some games will actually start using E cores and I get less stuttering. Can someone compare this to APO?

Good. I don’t think it’s a big deal that they took their time tho, there are hardly any games that support this feature yet.

Bad luck, this is why I don’t really like buying hardware for “OC potential” anymore. I’m generally not lucky when it comes to this stuff.

The Arctic is one of the better ones, but I can stilll hear the pump noise. Maybe the EK Nucleus, although I haven’t tried that one yet.

Your motherboard seems to support Asus EZ Flash, so you can update the BIOS without any CPU. All you need is a USB stick with the latest BIOS version.