MackTKau you're correct. The game tries to spread the CPU load across all the cores evenly. The user.cfg does the opposite and concentrates the load onto a few cores, while other cores sit idle. This causes some of the cores to hit 100% utilization, which causes framerate drops and worse 1% lows.
You're also correct about the Frostbite engine using AVX2 SIMD instructions which causes CPUs to run hotter than normal. There's an AVX offset setting in motherboard BIOS which automatically downclocks CPU frequency when AVX instructions are executing. I don't use AVX offset because I think buying a better CPU cooler is the way to go.
AVX2 is what I thought it might be but since I don't know I didn't want to say. I do have a -2 offset in my system already, since the 14900k is a known superhot CPU especially when using AVX (I have a lot of bios tweaks to get my CPU in a sweet spot of performance vs temps).
I can see in hwinfo that the cpu p-core clock will bounce around from my bios set 5.6mhz to a 5.4 which suggests the AVX offset is working (as -2 equals 2 ratios, ie, 200mhz) when the game runs an AVX instruction.
Last night I cleaned out the dust in my PC fans & radiator fins, dropped the max temp by 15c lol. Easily the most effective tweak you can ever do is regular vacuuming and dusting. 🤣
People on hot intel CPUs who haven't been doing bios tweaks and might have weaker CPU coolers and haven't replaced thermal paste in a while (i use ptm 7950) is going to be some of the explanation of high temps. If they're using overly high settings for their system that's going to cause high temps as well.
MackTKau a good cleaning definitely helps. The i9-14900k is a nuclear reactor. It's pretty amazing there's air coolers on the market for $18 that can handle 200 watt CPUs. Although I'm sure the i9-14900k goes over 200 watts when overclocked.
