When Intel released Alder Lake, we were told that some games had problems running on the newer 12th generation processors, mainly due to DRM. However, MSI Z690 cards should be able to fix this problem. Here's how and what it means to you. The workaround was first found by PCMag, which detailed how it works. Some Asus and MSI motherboards have a BIOS setting called "Legacy Game Compatibility Mode", which you need to enable. Then once you've started a game, just press the Scroll Lock key and the game should launch. The fix was not working for PCMag at the time their article was published. But Wccftech reports that the solution should work now. And, even if it isn't, an Intel blog post describes a software patch the company is working on that should fix the problem for good. So hopefully, if you were an early adopter of the Intel Core i9-12900K, you'll soon be able to play all your games, one way or another.
Analysis: what is the problem?
The reason Intel 12th Gen processors have trouble running games is entirely due to Denuvo DRM, because of course it is. The problem stems from the two groups of cores that make the Intel Core i9-12900K such a powerful and efficient chip. Sometimes Denuvo reads these two groups of performance cores and efficiency cores as two separate computers trying to run a game at the same time. It makes the software think something suspicious is going on and crashes the system. So it's true that Intel's hardware is affected, but it's really up to Denuvo not to update their software on time. Intel's blog post mentions that "the vendor of the affected DRM software has identified a software patch." It's only a matter of time before this patch is widely distributed to all affected games. In the meantime, before you get any of these Intel processors, we recommend that you check the list of games affected by the issue on the Intel website. The best Intel Core i9-12900k deals of the moment