Why is my i7-14700KF dropping frames in Tomb Raider?
The moment a tomb started collapsing, the smooth gameplay turned into a slideshow, which was beyond frustrating. I checked HWInfo and saw the P-Cores were barely working while the E-Cores were slammed at 90-95% handling the physics, leaving the game starved for single-core power. I tried enabling Windows Game Mode, but it didn't touch the core allocation—it felt like shouting into a void. I had to go into the BIOS, lock the Ring Bus to 4.5GHz, and cap the E-Cores at 3.2GHz to force the workload back to the P-Cores. P-Core load jumped back to 75-85%, and FPS stabilized between 110-130. I actually black-screened my PC when I set the Vcore too low, and I had to bump the Load-Line Calibration from Level 4 to Level 6 to stop the crashing. Temps are sitting at 68-76℃ with power draw around 210W. Frame times are now a crisp 5.1-6.4ms, though the CPU runs significantly hotter now.
