Some games may not work on Alder Lake. Hybrid architecture has DRM like Denuvo

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Some older games may not run with Intel’s new processors. Fortunately, this should be solvable in various ways.

In two weeks, Intel should release a new generation of desktop processors, 7nm Alder Lake chips. Thanks to the new architecture, they should interestingly improve performance, however, it seems that there may be problems with them. Alder Lake may reportedly have trouble running some games because their copy protections (DRMs) are not compatible with an architecture that is relatively new to personal computers running Windows.

On x86 / PC and Windows platforms, it is usually assumed that all existing software will continue to run on future hardware. Sometimes, however, various obstacles prevent this. According to game developer documentation, the new Alder Lake processors (which will be officially marketed as “Core 12th Generation”) may have such compatibility issues with some games. This is not directly a problem with the game code itself, but with DRM, ie copy protection. DRM is a very low-level software that may have incompatibilities rather than common applications.

According to Intel, some DRM technologies will need updates to work properly with Alder Lake processors. The problem is probably with the hybrid (“big.LITTLE”) combination of cores. DRM may collect information about the processor used in an effort to prevent the game from running on a computer other than the one owning the licensee. For a hybrid processor, however, the returned CPU information (so-called CPUID) may differ depending on whether the software performs the detection when running on a large core (“P-Core”) or on a small / efficient core (E-Core) – to this document They directly alert Intel. However, if DRM is not prepared for such a case, the mere innocent migration of a thread from one core to another on the same CPU can trigger alarms. This incompatibility with DRM would then result in the game failing to start or crashing.

Affected games will need updates

It’s not a hardware flaw, a vulnerability, or a design flaw, but purely that the processor has features that software developers didn’t anticipate in the past, even though they’re not illegitimate. The solution will be to fix software that will break the existence of two different types of cores in the processor. This means that various DRMs that will stop working on Alder Lake will need to be updated. According to Intel, this applies, for example, to Denuvo technology, which will require such an update. Intel is already working or has worked with their developers on this.

However, DRM usually cannot be updated separately because it is deeply integrated into the game itself. This means that the repair will have to be done by the game developer, a new build with updated DRM components will need to be released. This will not be a problem for new games that are still receiving updates for other reasons. However, for titles that publishers have stopped maintaining and promoting, such an update may never come. This will probably be the biggest problem.

Workarounds

We don’t know yet how widespread this will be with Alder Lake processors. It is possible that even if the DRM is not updated, it will be possible to break the game with certain climbs. Perhaps it could help to use affinity (assigning a process to CPU threads) so that game processors and DRM always run on only one type of core. The question is whether this will be feasible for DRM components running at the kernel level as services and drivers.

But then it might be a solution to temporarily deactivate one type of kernel temporarily while playing. Perhaps BIOSs (more precisely UEFI firmware) of motherboards could allow this. It will be necessary to restart the PC, but this problem with processor compatibility should then be eliminated in all games.

Some Alder Lake configurations (35W, possibly 65W Core i5 and Core i3 models) should probably have only large / P-Core cores and no small / efficient cores. Of course, this problem should not arise with these Alder Lake processors, so it is not something that concerns 12th generation processors without reservations.

Source: Tom’s Hardware