http://www.pcgamer.com/ubisoft-says-assassins-creed-origins-high-cpu-usage-is-not-due-to-drm/

There have been quite a lot of complaints about the load that Assassin's Creed: Origins puts on CPUs, attributed in this Torrentfreak report to Ubisoft's anti-piracy efforts. Since the once-mighty Denuvo is now a soft target, Ubisoft has bolstered it with VMProtect, which adds another layer of digital armor that crackers have to get through, and according to the report it drops the game's performance by an estimated 30 to 40 percent. 

This is all based on the word of a cracker who claims to have obtained AC: Origin's binary code. "This layer of VMProtect will make Denuvo a lot more harder to trace and keygen than without it," they said. "But if you are a legit customer, well, it’s not that great for you since this combo could tank your performance by a lot, especially if you are using a low-mid range CPU. That’s why we are seeing 100 percent CPU usage on 4 core CPUs right now for example."