Intel knows gamers want faster hardware, but the company’s latest message is clear: raw CPU specs aren’t the only thing deciding your frame rates. According to Intel VP and GM Robert Hallock, many of the performance debates around the company’s hybrid processors are missing the bigger issue—software optimization.
The discussion picked up after some reviewers and enthusiasts reported that certain games appeared to run faster when Intel’s Efficient cores (E-cores) were disabled. That led to a familiar conclusion in the PC gaming community: maybe E-cores are dragging gaming performance down. Hallock says that assumption doesn’t hold up. In his view, when you compare Performance cores (P-cores) and E-cores strictly in terms of gaming results, the difference is minimal—around a 1% gap—meaning E-cores themselves aren’t the real culprit behind lower game performance.
Instead, Intel is pointing the finger at how games and game engines behave on modern hybrid CPUs. Many titles were built on the expectation that CPU cores are all the same. Hybrid designs break that assumption by mixing different types of cores designed for different workloads. When a game or engine doesn’t account for those differences, it can lead to scheduling problems, uneven thread distribution, and inconsistent frame times—issues that can feel like “bad performance” even when the hardware is capable.
Hallock’s bigger argument is that PC gamers, including hardcore enthusiasts, often underestimate how much the software layer matters. CPU performance in games doesn’t depend only on silicon. It also depends on how well the operating system schedules tasks, how the game engine assigns threads, what background apps are doing, and even things like power plans and system configuration. Intel’s hybrid chips lean heavily on technologies and OS behavior to steer the right work to the right cores, but if the game isn’t optimized for that environment, performance can be left on the table.
He goes further by claiming there can be a surprisingly large amount of “hidden” performance locked behind optimization—potentially 10% to 30%—simply because a game isn’t tuned for a specific CPU design. In other words, upgrading hardware can help, but it won’t always unlock the best possible results if the software isn’t taking full advantage of the processor’s architecture.
Hybrid CPU designs have already proven their value in multitasking and productivity workloads, where splitting work across different core types can be a major advantage. But in gaming, Hallock suggests, hardware alone can’t always deliver peak results unless developers and platforms do the work to optimize scheduling and threading behavior. If those software bottlenecks are addressed, Intel believes gaming performance could move significantly closer to the top performers—and, in the best-case scenario, potentially challenge the current leaders more directly.
For gamers, the takeaway is simple: if you’re troubleshooting performance on a modern Intel hybrid CPU, the answer may not be as straightforward as turning E-cores off. The real gains may come from better game updates, improved engine support, OS scheduling improvements, and more thoughtful optimization across the PC gaming stack.
