For the launch of its Core Ultra 200S Plus processors, Intel released a software package called Binary Optimization Tool (IBOT for short), which promised to give certain games a substantial boost in performance. The chip giant also promised that it would be rolling out updates when possible, and true to its word, the first one has just landed.
As explained in a short article about the update, IBOT “analyzes how a game’s machine code behaves on Intel hardware and intelligently redirects certain workloads through optimized execution paths.” It’s only available for Core Ultra 200S Plus desktop and mobile chips, plus the Core Ultra Series 3 range (Panther Lake), so only a relatively small number of Intel CPU owners can use it.
But for those who can, you might be happy to know that Hollow Knight: Silksong, Homeworld 3, Little Nightmares III, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, The Callisto Protocol, and Warframe have been given the IBOT treatment.
Intel claims that with a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus, paired with a GeForce RTX 5090 and 32 GB of DDR5-7200, you can expect to see up to 27% more performance in Silksong at 1080p High, down to a mere 2% frame rate bump in Metro Exodus.
The sequel to Hollow Knight runs generally fine as is, though I have seen some reports that the frame rate can unexpectedly plummet in some boss battles. Whether that’s a sign of a CPU limitation or game optimisation issues isn’t overly clear, but hey, getting 27% more oomph for simply updating some software and then clicking a few buttons is fine, yes?
Well, as with all things CPU-related, it depends very much on what resolution, graphics settings, and graphics card you have. Playing a game at 1080p High with an RTX 5090 is a pretty unusual scenario, and if you had that level of hardware, you’d be playing the likes of Metro and The Callisto Protocol at 4K with ray tracing enabled.
In such circumstances, the GPU becomes the limiting factor to performance, unless you use upscaling to drop the rendering resolution down to 1080p or lower. Although that will bring the CPU back into the mix, the game’s frame rate will still be heavily controlled by the GPU because of the ray tracing.
For example, I’ve tried the new BOT update in Metro on my 270K Plus, RTX 4080 Super main PC and didn’t see any difference at all when using 4K High. But with DLSS Performance enabled, the average frame rate increased by an average of 1% across three runs. So in line with Intel’s figures, but also well within a margin of error.
Anyway, if you do have a compatible processor and you want to check out IBOT for yourself, then all you need to do is download the latest Intel Platform Performance Package (IPPP).