Hollow Knight Silksong Runs 27% Faster as Intel Tries to Change the FPS Narrative

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On June 9, 2026, Intel said its iBOT game support list had expanded to 19 titles, adding seven more PC games including Hollow Knight: Silksong, Warframe, and Homeworld 3. In Intel’s own 1080p high settings test using a Core Ultra 7 270K Plus with an RTX 5090, those newly supported games saw an average frame-rate gain of 12%, with Hollow Knight: Silksong posting the biggest uplift at 27%.

That headline number will get the attention. A 27% jump on Hollow Knight: Silksong is exactly the kind of stat Intel wants on a slide. Intel’s description of iBOT, though, is fairly specific: it is a runtime optimization translation layer that uses HWPGO to collect low-level chip characteristics during code execution, then redirects instructions to a more efficient execution sequence to improve IPC. In plain terms, it is not adding anything to the game itself. It is trying to make the same code run more efficiently.

The more important caveat is that iBOT will not help every game equally. Intel has already been unusually direct about that. Its gains depend heavily on the quality of a program’s underlying code, which means some games simply have less room for improvement. Even among the newly added titles, deeply optimized games can see limited benefit. Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is the clearest example here, improving by only 2%.

From a player’s perspective, that matters more than the familiar “up to 27%” line. iBOT is not a mass-market feature. It relies on specific hardware registers and currently supports only Arrow Lake Refresh, Panther Lake, and the latest HX-series mobile chips. Older CPUs cannot use it. Users also need to install the latest platform performance suite and manually enable iBOT in the Advanced Options section of the application optimization interface.

The broader point is not just a few extra percentage points. Intel is trying to turn “processor optimization” into something players can actually notice. Rather than leaving the pitch on a spec sheet, it is tying the feature to recognizable games such as Hollow Knight: Silksong, Warframe, The Callisto Protocol, Homeworld 3, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, and Little Nightmares III.

The practical takeaway is straightforward. If you are already considering a system on Intel’s new platform and you regularly play games on the iBOT support list, this feature is worth treating as a bonus. If you are on an older CPU, or mostly play games that are already heavily optimized, there is no reason to treat iBOT alone as a reason to upgrade. It clearly works in some cases, and the best-case numbers are real, but it is still a feature built for a narrow slice of hardware and a narrow set of software.