Intel has a Pretty Big Problem..

[CaptainRAVE]

Intel's crashing CPU crisis deepens as more models are affected than originally thought

The news coming out of Intel about its crashing 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs is not getting any better, even after they said they had finally "solved" the...

www.techspot.com

Getting worse and worse. No wonder Intel is so quiet.

 

[wookiee87]

When you think about how far the i9's boost from there base frequency its not suprising things are going wrong, adding literally 3ghz on top is going some.
Back in the overclocking days, running around 1ghz over base frequency was really good and only a few chips could do that.

 

[Rroff]

When you think about how far the i9's boost from there base frequency its not suprising things are going wrong, adding literally 3ghz on top is going some.
Back in the overclocking days, running around 1ghz over base frequency was really good and only a few chips could do that.

The boost frequency isn't the problem as such, what I suspect is part of the problem though is maybe far less chips are actually good enough quality to run these frequencies at reasonable voltages i.e. say 20% of chips should have been a "14800" rather than 14900, etc. but Intel pushed on with them being 14900s.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

The issue is bad enough but how Intel are handling it will absolutely sink consumer confidence in them for years to come.
There is no way my next CPU will be an Intel unless they push those next ones out the door at comically low prices, and I was previously looking forward to their new kit.
Wonder how low their share price will go over the next few months.

 

[Rroff]

The issue is bad enough but how Intel are handling it will absolutely sink consumer confidence in them for years to come.
There is no way my next CPU will be an Intel unless they push those next ones out the door at comically low prices, and I was previously looking forward to their new kit.
Wonder how low their share price will go over the next few months.

How Intel is handling it is not good, but we still don't know the true reasons or true extent of it - everyone has convinced themselves it is a massive scale problem but it is far from proven to be with a lot of potential explanations for what has been seen so far.

I'm also yet to find a 13th or 14th gen CPU actually suffering from these issues in person, at least not so far even if they go on to degrade but some of these CPUs are over a year old and have been run hard.

EDIT: On a related note - I see some people are saying many of the motherboard vendors made changes to loadline stuff in the run up to the 14th gen which causes many 13th and 14th gen to run around 1.5v during gaming for instance when they'd run 1.3-1.35 before.

 

[Dg834man]

When you think about how far the i9's boost from there base frequency its not suprising things are going wrong

The base frequency was marketing exercise to make the processors appear more energy efficient.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

EDIT: On a related note - I see some people are saying many of the motherboard vendors made changes to loadline stuff in the run up to the 14th gen which causes many 13th and 14th gen to run around 1.5v during gaming for instance when they'd run 1.3-1.35 before.

For sure, some problems are likely caused by motherboard manufacturers ramping voltage. This is still Intel's problem though. They need to get their house in order, and establish better baselines. Maybe before the CPUs are released and being cooked to death.
This isn't a mountain out of a molehill. It's a disgraceful situation for a CPU vendor to be in, and they will feel the effects for the next few years.

 

[Chud_Jenny]

One setting to limit max core voltage on Gigabyte Z790/Z690 motherboards.

My Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/buildzoidTeespring: https://teespring.com/stores/actually-hardcore-overclockingBandcamp: https://machineforscreams.bandca...

youtu.be

 

[jigger]

The issue is bad enough but how Intel are handling it will absolutely sink consumer confidence in them for years to come.
There is no way my next CPU will be an Intel unless they push those next ones out the door at comically low prices, and I was previously looking forward to their new kit.
Wonder how low their share price will go over the next few months.

I’m not sure how Intel could sell these cheap. The die size is pretty massive and the cost of running Intels fabs will be eye watering.

 

[Rogueywon]

Intel's crashing CPU crisis deepens as more models are affected than originally thought

The news coming out of Intel about its crashing 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs is not getting any better, even after they said they had finally "solved" the...

www.techspot.com

Getting worse and worse. No wonder Intel is so quiet.

And a microcode fix that can only be preventative rather than curative isn't going to do all that much good in big-picture terms. The percentage of owners of affected chips who read the specialist tech press or forums like this one is not large. While the last week or so has seen a slight widening of the coverage to more mainstream sites like Eurogamer, those will still only be reaching a fairly small overall audience. As such, most of the 13th/14th gen owners out there are only going to find out about this when their chip starts throwing up faults - they won't be looking to do any BIOS updates before that happens.

The only way that changes is if this starts getting coverage in the "proper" mainstream press (CNN, BBC etc), which is probably what Intel are most desperate to avoid right now.

 

[G J]

Intel's crashing CPU crisis deepens as more models are affected than originally thought

The news coming out of Intel about its crashing 13th- and 14th-generation CPUs is not getting any better, even after they said they had finally "solved" the...

www.techspot.com

Getting worse and worse. No wonder Intel is so quiet.

This is a summary of what's going on and say's nothing new.

 

[Rroff]

This is a summary of what's going on and say's nothing new.

Sadly the case for most of the news people keep (re)posting on this, very little which is actually new or actually reveals something.

 

[arknor]

Surely people should be able to argue they are not fit for purpose and a full refund should be expected.

the life time of the cpu is also not good enough... many people won't upgrade for 5 years.... I'd expect a CPU to last atleast that long.


I guess intel can argue they are fixing it with microcode, but it wasn't fit for purpose when it was sold surely?


Nearly all of my computer components last that long, I think the only failure I've had was about 2 decades ago with an nvidia GPU.


Having to RMA a cpu for me would mean no PC for however long it takes... I'd never go back to intel again if I were one of you guys.... and intel should be aware of that themselves and making things right.


lets face it mostly the people with intel builds now are pretty much "intel fans" who trusted the quality of the brand.

a misplaced trust it seems

I own some intel stockl and I'm tempted to dump it at a 20% loss over this crap and buy AMD stock instead... I didn';t invest for the cpus though I invested for the fabs which still could pay off maybe.. one day...

 

[Rroff]

Surely people should be able to argue they are not fit for purpose and a full refund should be expected.

the life time of the cpu is also not good enough... many people won't upgrade for 5 years.... I'd expect a CPU to last atleast that long.


Nearly all of my computer components last that long, I think the only failure I've had was about 2 decades ago with an nvidia GPU.

Based on what? I'm not saying there isn't a problem but so far there is only:

-Notification from nVidia that some Intel CPUs are causing an out of memory error, without specifying details as to why.
-Some tech journalists claiming unnamed sources are seeing high failure rates in specific applications (and some named UE5 developers).
-Limited publication by Intel claiming it only affects a small number of CPUs.
-Some tech forums seeing a higher than normal number of posts about 13th and 14th gen i9s (and to a limited extent other 13th and 14th gen) having issues but reporting a range of problems, many of which are likely user error.
-Individual failed CPUs submitted to the likes of Gamer's Nexus, or returned to Intel, for analysis.

It still won't be grounds for people to argue they aren't fit for purpose unless at a minimum the retailers acknowledge high return rates and they probably aren't in a hurry to do that even if they are seeing them.

So far so much is unproven despite people running with this being a massive problem, which it may or may not be - even on these forums people complaining about issues with these CPUs aren't that extensive let alone those issues which are actually a CPU failure - the best evidence in that respect is a small number of people who've said RMAing their CPU for a replacement did fix the problem - though that could still be that they had a CPU with a poor IMC which didn't like their RAM, etc.

 

[TrixP10]

Surely people should be able to argue they are not fit for purpose and a full refund should be expected.

the life time of the cpu is also not good enough... many people won't upgrade for 5 years.... I'd expect a CPU to last atleast that long.


I guess intel can argue they are fixing it with microcode, but it wasn't fit for purpose when it was sold surely?


Nearly all of my computer components last that long, I think the only failure I've had was about 2 decades ago with an nvidia GPU.


Having to RMA a cpu for me would mean no PC for however long it takes... I'd never go back to intel again if I were one of you guys.... and intel should be aware of that themselves and making things right.


lets face it mostly the people with intel builds now are pretty much "intel fans" who trusted the quality of the brand.

a misplaced trust it seems

I own some intel stockl and I'm tempted to dump it at a 20% loss over this crap and buy AMD stock instead... I didn';t invest for the cpus though I invested for the fabs which still could pay off maybe.. one day...

IMHO most of Wall St. seems to have turned a blind eye to this latest news but I can't see Intel having a rosy ER this week. Things at camp Intel are dire and projected earnings are in the pits even without this debacle. Selling even at a loss might prove to be your best option.

 

[Darren1967]

I've been using an i5-13600KF at stock clocks on an ASUS ROG Strix Z690-A Gaming WiFi D4 motherboard with 32 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3600 memory since December 2022 with no issues at all. It was a custom built PC with a Corsair H100i 240mm All-in-One liquid cooler from PCS*********, who had the foresight to enable the Enforce All Limits setting in the BIOS for the ASUS OC profile, so the CPU has never been running that hot or with excessive voltages. Perforrmance-wise it was hitting the rated 5.1 GHz on the P-cores and 3.9 GHz on the E-cores in games so no issues there either.

I actually did not even update the motherboard BIOS from the one PCS********* installed (2204 I believe) until May 2024 when I heard about the Intel CPU issue and decided to try the new Intel profile. Since then I've updated it three times to the latest 3701 BIOS which includes a microcode update for eTVB (?) or something. Again, everything runs fine and I have even switched to the Intel Default profile albeit with SVID set to Auto, from Intel's Fail Safe (since it resulted in higher temperatures and voltages otherwise), and with the PL1 and PL2 set to 181 and another Amp setting, I forget what it is called, set to 200, as per the Intel 'performance' specifications.

Not overly concerned about this issue as I don't overclock and chances are that I will have moved onto a new CPU and motherboard long before the CPU ever fails. Of course, there is still a chance my CPU could suddenly show signs of degradation but I am hopeful. If it does become unstable then I'll either contact Intel for a replacement or buy a new CPU and motherboard, depending how long I've actually had it.

That said, my next CPU and motherboard will almost certainly be AMD ones as I am disappointed at Intel's response to this issue which is to basically keep as quiet as possible and only provide the absolute minimum of support and commentary such that no-one really knows which CPUs are affected or, indeed, if all 13th and 14th CPUs are affected.

 

[Grim5]

Sadly the case for most of the news people keep (re)posting on this, very little which is actually new or actually reveals something.

That is also par for the course for Techspot. I usually ignore Techspot articles because they are usually just reposting or rehashing existing news

 

[Sargatanas2511]

I think it's safe to say it's best to avoid Intel in any capacity until we have official statements on the full extent of this.

Though I don't think we will have that information for a long time, Intel are doing their best to hide as much as they can it seems.

 

[Rogueywon]

I think it's safe to say it's best to avoid Intel in any capacity until we have official statements on the full extent of this.

Though I don't think we will have that information for a long time, Intel are doing their best to hide as much as they can it seems.

It's tricky. I think you're probably right, but what we've seen so far implies the failures are heaviest on the high-end chips in heavily used servers, workstations and gaming PCs. That doesn't mean the problem won't spread, but for now, I'd be less nervous at the low end. I bought my parents a laptop with an 13th gen i5 in for Christmas and given they use it for web-browsing and a bit of Office stuff, I'm not particularly worried about it going pop any time soon. I was talking to an IT guy at work last week who reckons that while the failure rate of the latest batch of 13th-gen i7 laptops we rolled out may be very slightly higher than expected, it's only by a small margin and can't be definitively attributed to this problem. We're not a tech company and those laptops are mostly used for web-browsing and Office stuff.

That said, I am glad that the gaming PC I bought earlier in the year was on the red-team side (my first time on that side since an absolute crashy-burny nightmare with an Athlon Thunderbird 900 when I was an undergrad), with a 7950X3D rather than a 14900K. I wouldn't be advising anybody to buy an Intel CPU for a gaming PC right now.

 

[ED209]

I think it's safe to say it's best to avoid Intel in any capacity until we have official statements on the full extent of this.

Though I don't think we will have that information for a long time, Intel are doing their best to hide as much as they can it seems.

In doing this though I think its going to hurt their sales.

Due to not knowing the truth or the extent of the issue people are avoiding their processors when upgrading etc