Gigabyte tool can turn off E-cores of Alder Lake CPUs in Windows

Gigabyte has released a tool that allows owners of the brand’s Z690 motherboards to disable the efficiency cores of Intel Alder Lake processors in Windows. This is currently necessary for some games with DRM, which do not work with active E-cores.

Gigabyte calls its tool the DRM Fix Tool, but in fact the software does not solve any problems. With the tool, the E-cores can be disabled in Windows, something that users otherwise have to adjust a setting for in the bios. To use the software tool, the latest bios version must be installed. For now, Gigabyte is the only parent manufacturer to have released such a tool.

Intel’s Alder Lake processors are not compatible with some games. That is due to the DRM implementations of those titles, which incorrectly recognize the E-cores of the CPUs as a separate system and therefore prevent the games from working. DRM and game developers can fix that with software updates, but if such updates are not available, gamers can apply a workaround by disabling the E-cores. In general, this does not result in major performance losses in games, because they use the Performance cores of the Alder Lake processors more.