Intel CPUs have long been popular with PC gamers, but their enthusiasm for the platform has had little to do with the processors’ relatively weak integrated-graphics cores. Intel hopes to change that perception with its fourth-generation Core family, code-named Haswell.

At the 2013 Game Developer’s Conference, Intel unveiled two new DirectX extensions that give developers access to Haswell’s underlying hardware. One extension, dubbed PixelSync, will enable game programmers to create more-realistic smoke, hair, windows, foliage, and other forms that involve complex geometry, according to Intel, by properly compositing partially transparent pixels without bogging the processor down with sorting operations.

Game developer Creative Assembly has been working with Intel to use this new feature in its upcoming title Total War: Rome II.

“We’ve shifted our focus toward ensuring that the game looks great whether you’re running it on a slim and sexy Ultrabook or a monster desktop,” says Mike Simpson, creative director at Creative Assembly. “The new rendering extensions [Intel] provides have been an enormous help in making that dream a reality.”

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