Intel is still working to address incompatibility issues between its Alder Lake CPUs and dozens of DRM-protected PC games. But in the meantime, motherboard maker Gigabyte has released a temporary fix.
The Taiwanese vendor issued its “DRM Fix Tool” for owners of Gigabyte’s Z690 motherboards. The tool functions as a Windows app and gives customers an easy way to temporarily shut down the “Efficiency cores” on Intel’s 12th generation ”Alder Lake” Core processors.
Currently, the chips struggle to run 45 DRM-protected games on Windows 10 and 18 games on Windows 11 because Denuvo’s anti-pracy DRM software mistakes the hybrid architecture on the Alder Lake CPUs as two PCs attempting to run the game at the same time. In reality, the processor’s “Performance cores” and “Efficiency cores” are processing the game in tandem.
When Intel first detailed the DRM incompatibility problems, the company mentioned it was preparing a workaround that would involve placing the Efficiency cores on standby. But none of the major motherboard brands had the workaround ready to go.
Gigabyte now says it’s improved Intel’s original workaround by removing the need to adjust the motherboard’s BIOS settings and use the Scroll Lock key (Scr Lk) on the keyboard to shut down the Efficiency cores. Instead, owners can place the Efficiency cores on standby through the newly announced Windows app.
But to use it, customers will need to first update their Z690 motherboard’s BIOS, which requires several steps. This includes downloading the new BIOS version from Gigabyte’s customer support pages.
Other motherboard vendors, including Asus and MSI, are also developing their own temporary workarounds to fix the DRM incompatibility issues with Alder Lake. But the companies have yet to say when they’ll arrive.
In the meantime, Intel has been working with game developers to permanently resolve the problems. The list of affected games has shrunk from 51 to 45, and another 11 games, including Mortal Kombat 11 and Total Warhammer 1, are expected to be patched later this month.
