This is the second "non-advertised" feature reduction I've heard of on Intel's 12th generation processors. The first was losing the AVX-512 instructions [0]. The problem is that these processors are viewed as direct upgrades. But if you need to run AVX heavy or SGX-dependent workloads, these chips are now objectively worse than their prior generation counterparts. It's quite a shame, because most consumers don't realize the impact until it's too late. For example, I had to help a friend troubleshoot low framerates on Star Citizen. It turns out that disabling the AVX instructions absolutely destroyed his framerates in that game. Turning back on AVX using his motherboard's BIOS (because the motherboard manufacturer reversed the microcode and figured out how Intel disabled it) alleviated the problem, but it's a ridiculous step that most people won't do.

If there's anything that makes me think twice about Intel's future, it's moves like this.

[0]: https://www.pcgamer.com/intel-is-set-to-disable-avx-512-on-i...