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There is no fix for Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs — any damage is permanent

Black_Stride

do not tempt fate do not contrain Wonder Woman's thighs do not do not
As a consumer you have plenty reason to be wary. Two generations of cpus suffering from the same hardware fault is a major issue and is a red flag. How did intel’s QA testing not catch this, or worst what if they did and intel ignored the issue to pushed out an unstable chips just not to fall behind AMD. I wouldn’t even consider intel until they have a couple of generation chips into 7nm before I would feel good about purchasing another intel chip. If anything this smells of class action lawsuit.

Its one generation.
RaptorLake.....RPL-S, RPL-H and RPL-R are the same generation.
AlderLake which came prior and MeteorLake which came after both havent exhibited the same issues.

That user wanted to get an AlderLake CPU, theres been no reported issues with the 12400 hell im running a 12400 with the powerlimits removed and i havent had any instability since launch.
ARL should have no issues especially now since Intel is aware that we know this is an issue, no chance they release ArrowLake with problems.
 

proandrad

Member
Its one generation.
RaptorLake.....RPL-S, RPL-H and RPL-R are the same generation.
AlderLake which came prior and MeteorLake which came after both havent exhibited the same issues.

That user wanted to get an AlderLake CPU, theres been no reported issues with the 12400 hell im running a 12400 with the powerlimits removed and i havent had any instability since launch.
ARL should have no issues especially now since Intel is aware that we know this is an issue, no chance they release ArrowLake with problems.
It’s two generations, because that’s how intel has sold and market it as. I don’t trust anything they say, as always will wait for 3rd confirmation to say if this issue has been corrected. But as of now I doubt this isn’t going to lower their high end performance numbers for benchmarks they used to sell these chips. This whole thing smells.
 
The issues may very well be resolved with Arrow Lake, but here's the problem: Intel slow-walked the absolute fuck their (partial) response to the 13th and 14th gens' failures. And it took Intel months after MOBO manufacturers complained to Hardware Unboxed about Intel throwing them under the bus to even start acknowledging the instability and oxidation issues.

As far as I'm concerned, anything Intel says regarding Arrow Lake's reliability should be interpreted as Trust Me Bro™ statements until proven otherwise.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
Is there any news on the two top OEMS (IBM designed lenovos and HP) workstations showing symptoms? And if not, it would be interesting to see if a known damaged chip running in one of those workstations - that are massively power optimised - ran stable or ran identically as it does in the self built with top tier mobo.

If Intel have managed to supply Lenovo and HP with chips that will exhibit this fault in their workstations then the full cause of the problem is going to be really obscure IMO because the testing IBM and HP do for design is at the level to supply aerospace, etc so would have caught 99.9% of edge case problems IMHO.
 

Hudo

Member
The issues may very well be resolved with Arrow Lake, but here's the problem: Intel slow-walked the absolute fuck their (partial) response to the 13th and 14th gens' failures. And it took Intel months after MOBO manufacturers complained to Hardware Unboxed about Intel throwing them under the bus to even start acknowledging the instability and oxidation issues.

As far as I'm concerned, anything Intel says regarding Arrow Lake's reliability should be interpreted as Trust Me Bro™ statements until proven otherwise.
Yeah. Their biggest blunder was not making faulty chips (even though it is fucking embarrassing). Their biggest blunder is how they have handled, or rather not handled, this whole thing.

If I was a business customer, I'd fucking plan my exit strategy out of Intel's ecosystem right now.
 

SonGoku

Member

The point still stands. If you need REAL mt performance, get a CPU with a lot of symmetrical cores.
Because AMD has no consumer desktop products to fill that niche. For MT apps that scale well with number of cores, C cores would give more performance per mm2 of die space so a hypothetical 9950X with 8P cores on one CCD and however many C cores fit on the second CCD would produce higher MT performance than a pure 8P + 8P design
I guess it would depend on what the energy and heat savings gave back in return, Intel have only gone the route they've gone because the headroom allows(or did before this flaw) them to get higher clocks on the primary core and downclock other P-cores proportionally less - from the single core peak - as they try to push all p-cores at the highest possible clock.

AMDs P cores CCD might be design bottlenecked elsewhere, like signalling making the chase for higher clocks unviable and would explain why they went with a monster 3D cache solution to eliminate MT bottlenecks at the existing clocks.
I can understand that from a single CCD design like the 9700X. But what about the 9950X which has two CCDs, one CCD could be P cores only and the other CCD compact cores only. That was the CPU would be the best of both worlds for gaming and productivity

Another thing that may influence their decisions is economy of scale i think, might be cheaper to just produce the same type of CCD dies across the entire product stack
 

PaintTinJr

Member
...

I can understand that from a single CCD design like the 9700X. But what about the 9950X which has two CCDs, one CCD could be P cores only and the other CCD compact cores only. That was the CPU would be the best of both worlds for gaming and productivity

Another thing that may influence their decisions is economy of scale i think, might be cheaper to just produce the same type of CCD dies across the entire product stack
IMO asymmetric scheduling of cores (or even just an asymmetric processor like Intel's for general compute) needs a big win to market effectively with customers, and unless that setup would provide an extra Ghz for the primary CCD p-core, and provide 2 to 4 more C-cores for the same chip area, I'm not sure its easier to sell than two symmetrical CCDs with quality p-cores.

Even with PlayStation 3's unique situation with the Cell BE, where the console was a closed platform and PlayStation provided the SDK exclusively the anti-heterogeneous compute acolytes like Gabe Newell still managed to easily besmirch the superiority of the solution vs 2 to 4 symmetrical SMT/HT cores.

This disaster for Intel might give them an easy marketing u-turn to return to an all symmetrical core future which I do believe has hampered their market share because I suspect most users that follow CPUs over the years are lukewarm about an open platform CPU that needs specialist OS support to get the best out of it when fully loaded with work.
 

Unknown?

Member
That's a pretty bad take. It's not about the issue, but how you handle it. As bad as the RROD was, MS handled it very well and on top of that all their future console hardware was very reliable so I don't see why the people that buy them are "clowns". AMD has had hardware issues in the past and now with this problem Intel faces, I guess one must stop buying desktop CPUs altogether in order not to be a clown.
It was only handled well after lots of lawsuits were threatened.

Unlike AMD and Intel, Microsoft knew their hardware was faulty.
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
If I was a business customer, I'd fucking plan my exit strategy out of Intel's ecosystem right now.

Unfortunately for Intel, businesses have been doing just that when it comes to servers. Now, it looks like this might facilitate a speed-up on desktops and laptops.
 

YeulEmeralda

Linux User
What made Microsoft so good in the RROD situation is that they made the call to fix it no matter the cost.

Ultimately you can either piss off consumers and the media- which will cost you money in the long run- or bite the bullet and give everyone their money back.

Either way stock holders won't be happy.
 

PaintTinJr

Member
It was only handled well after lots of lawsuits were threatened.

Unlike AMD and Intel, Microsoft knew their hardware was faulty.
And IIRC the trigger was the announcement of PS3 clock specs being 200MHz per core more above the 3Ghz launch 360 clock, and with full Microsoft bravado they had to match the PS3.

Again IIRC - though might be misremembering - the Xenon chip official certification tests were all originally done at 2.8Ghz at IBM in Canada, which would mean a 1200Mhz (3x 400mhz) clock uplift in the final product over certified test numbers.
 

MacReady13

Member
I have a 14700k and haven't had any issues that I've noticed. What exactly am I looking for to see if I have a faulty CPU? Any tests? Any red flags that will show I need to get this thing out of my PC? HELP!!!!!!!!!
 

Bojji

Member
I have a 14700k and haven't had any issues that I've noticed. What exactly am I looking for to see if I have a faulty CPU? Any tests? Any red flags that will show I need to get this thing out of my PC? HELP!!!!!!!!!

You can use prime 95. Issues should be seen in normal usage so if you don't have any problems update bios, don't oc and your cpu should be fine (at least for some time).
 

MacReady13

Member
You can use prime 95. Issues should be seen in normal usage so if you don't have any problems update bios, don't oc and your cpu should be fine (at least for some time).
I only had my PC built in Feb so bios should be updated (I have a gigabyte motherboard) but I wouldn't have a clue on how to oc the cpu. I've had zero crashes or anything weird happen to my PC in the last 5 months...
 
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winjer

Gold Member
I only had my PC built in Feb so bios should be updated (I have a gigabyte motherboard) but I wouldn't have a clue on how to oc the cpu. I've had zero crashes or anything weird happen to my PC in the last 5 months...

There is already a new UEFI, with update microcode from Intel, released a month ago.
It already ahs some tweaks to power usage, that will probably help mitigate degradation.

The problem is that your CPU is probably degrading already at a faster speed than normal, but still has not reached a point of instability.
So the recommendation is to update your UEFI now. And update it again in mid August, when Intel releases the new voltage mitigations.
 

winjer

Gold Member

Law firm, Abington Cole + Ellery, is investigating a potential class action lawsuit against Intel due to instability issues in their 13th and 14th Gen CPUs. Intel has acknowledged the problem, stating that elevated operating voltage caused by a microcode algorithm is resulting in instability. While Intel promises a patch, it won't prevent damage already done to affected chips.

Abington Cole + Ellery has launched a webpage highlighting the potential class action lawsuit against the computer chip giant. They are requesting affected individuals to submit their information through an online form here.

As expected....
 

Tsaki

Member



As expected....
MnYWqXT.gif
 

Celcius

°Temp. member


"in the coming days we will be sharing more details on two-year extended warranty support for our boxed Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors"
 

Chiggs

Gold Member
Intel is in some real trouble. I bet any top talent in that company is actively seeking employment elsewhere.
 

Xevo

Member
"The issue was identified in late 2022, and with the manufacturing improvements and additional screens implemented Intel was able to confirm full removal of impacted processors in our supply chain by early 2024. However, on-shelf inventory may have persisted into early 2024 as a result."

They gonna get sued hard for this.
 
A new microcode update is here, but Intel is only slowing down this degradation. 14900KS is still using a voltage that is too high (just less frequently), so it seems that people will have to tweak the voltage / boost settings for themselves to really solve this degradation problem.




 
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MacReady13

Member
A new microcode update is here, but Intel is only slowing down this degradation. 14900KS is still using a voltage that is too high (just less frequently), so it seems that people will have to tweak the voltage / boost settings for themselves to really solve this degradation problem.


How in the fuck do you do that on a gigabyte board? I’m lost with this kind of shit. I’m not a tech guy. Took me AGES to learn how to even update the bios last week and now I have to update it again. Fuck this PC gaming stuff is frustrating. And some wonder why many of us just stick to console gaming…
 
How in the fuck do you do that on a gigabyte board? I’m lost with this kind of shit. I’m not a tech guy. Took me AGES to learn how to even update the bios last week and now I have to update it again. Fuck this PC gaming stuff is frustrating. And some wonder why many of us just stick to console gaming…
You dont need to upgrade your bios to fix crashes and stop degradation. Just use these settings:

 

winjer

Gold Member
You dont need to upgrade your bios to fix crashes and stop degradation. Just use these settings:



Considering that what the new Intel UEFI does is to cap the core voltage at 1.55v, doing an undervolting like what he describes in the video, will probably be the better option.
 
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Danknugz

Member
no issues here on a 13900kf. any hard locks i get are when i forget to stop all my asus services / bloatware. i installed windows before realizing i had to turn off the "feature" in the bios that automatically installs the asus software / services into the windows OS, and instead of reinstalling windows just made a script to stop all the asus services. (didn't disable if i want to go back and reconfigure LEDs or fans etc) i hVe some python scripts for ai generation that have run for days using both cpu and gpu at at least 70-90% if not more with no issues. my scripts have built in delays to ease off so it isnt constant and gives 30 seconds to cool down here and there.

edit: running stock
 
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  • Louis focuses more on the broader industry-wide ramifications from Intel's screwup
  • Low profit margins and less an ideal liquidity = Trouble. Refunding all the defective 13th and 14th gen CPUs would really put Intel in a big financial hole which may explain why it slow-walked its response
  • If there's a problem, let the consumers know immediately (duh, but apparently not obvious to Intel)
  • Intel facing such a significant setback will (more so, already has) incentivize AMD to rest on its laurels
 

Celcius

°Temp. member

^^Intel now on the record saying that Arrow Lake isn't affected by the same instability/degradation issue
 
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Magic Carpet

Gold Member
My Lenovo Legion just put forth a Bios Update.
Not sure how this is going to 'fix' the issue but guess I'll do the update risking a power outage. I have a UPS but the battery is long dead.
Messing with Motherboard firmware when everything is working.
 

Celcius

°Temp. member

If Intel is releasing another stability update by the end of the month, does that mean that the issue isn't currently resolved with the 0x129 microcode update?
 
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kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
Intel is running out of replacement CPUs. This is going to become an issue for anyone with a flaky 13th/14th gen CPU. The article makes it seem that this is an opportunity to switch platforms, but it also brings additional costs like buying a brand new motherboard.


Perhaps waiting for Arrow Lake-S isn’t such a bad option anymore. Users from Hong Kong affected by Intel Raptor Lake-S, who requested replacements for their degraded Core i9-14900K processors, are now receiving messages from Synnex, one of the largest distributors of Intel hardware in the country. They state that there are no more CPUs available for replacement, reports HKEPC.

Instead, users are being told that Synnex will issue a refund of HK$4,200 (around $537 USD). The media outlet reports that several users have already received such a message, indicating that this is not an isolated incident and likely represents a new policy for affected users.

Intel running out of CPUs for replacement may be an opportunity for these users to take the refund and invest in a new platform. It doesn’t have to be Intel, though the company is expected to launch Core Ultra 200K CPUs in about a month and a half. AMD, which recently launched its Ryzen 9000 series, is also a viable alternative.
 
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Danknugz

Member
I had the occasional lockup, not sure if it was this actual problem surfacing but after changing a few bios settings it went away. 13900kf

it would happen typically when the ox was idle not actually doing anything and never when i was using it. i would come back to wake it up and it would be hard locked
 
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Celcius

°Temp. member

Intel found the root cause, 0x12B bios update incoming...
 

kruis

Exposing the sinister cartel of retailers who allow companies to pay for advertising space.
From that article:

Vmin Shift Instability Root Cause

Intel® has localized the Vmin Shift Instability issue to a clock tree circuit within the IA core which is particularly vulnerable to reliability aging under elevated voltage and temperature. Intel has observed these conditions can lead to a duty cycle shift of the clocks and observed system instability.

Intel® has identified four (4) operating scenarios that can lead to Vmin shift in affected processors:

  1. Motherboard power delivery settings exceeding Intel power guidance.
    a. Mitigation: Intel® Default Settings recommendations for Intel® Core™ 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors.
  2. eTVB Microcode algorithm which was allowing Intel® Core™ 13th and 14th Gen i9 desktop processors to operate at higher performance states even at high temperatures.
    a. Mitigation: microcode 0x125 (June 2024) addresses eTVB algorithm issue.
  3. Microcode SVID algorithm requesting high voltages at a frequency and duration which can cause Vmin shift.
    a. Mitigation: microcode 0x129 (August 2024) addresses high voltages requested by the processor.
  4. Microcode and BIOS code requesting elevated core voltages which can cause Vmin shift especially during periods of idle and/or light activity.
    a. Mitigation: Intel® is releasing microcode 0x12B, which encompasses 0x125 and 0x129 microcode updates, and addresses elevated voltage requests by the processor during idle and/or light activity periods.

4a is the hopefully final bug caught by Intel. The surprising bit is that the elevated voltage spikes (and subsequent instability and CPU detoriation) could happen during "periods of idle and/or light activity. " So the CPU could get damaged when the computer was doing nothing special at all. This could mean that just about everyone with a 13th/14th gen Intel CPU could have a bad CPU by now.
 
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