How to stop Intel Core i5-13490F from lagging in FF XV?
Watching Noctis pull off a flashy combo only for the game to turn into a slideshow is absolutely lethal in a fight. Looking back at my logs, the P-Cores on my i5-13490F were hitting peaks of 85℃ - 92℃, which triggered some aggressive thermal throttling. I tried slapping the system on 'Ultimate Performance' mode, but that was a waste of time; it didn't fix the frames and just made my power draw swing wildly between 125W - 140W. I finally went into the BIOS Advanced menu, set a CPU core voltage offset to -0.05V, and locked the PL1 power limit at 110W. Using RTSS, I saw the frame times collapse from a messy 16ms - 32ms range down to a steady 12ms - 15ms. The input lag is basically gone. I did have a random reboot right after the voltage tweak, which I only solved by re-applying the XMP profile. Temps settled at 68℃ - 75℃ with fans spinning at 1600 - 1900 RPM. A 30-minute Cinebench stress test confirmed zero crashes, and the RAM stayed cool at 58℃ - 63℃.
