News Intel finally announces a solution for CPU crashing errors — claims elevated voltages are the root cause; fix coming by mid-August

[ThomasKinsley]

So, they think they've found the cause and a solution, but they're going to just let this problem fester for another month before a solution can realistically get into the hands of end users??

I thought that was odd too, but this part of their statement jumped out:

"We are continuing validation to ensure that scenarios of instability reported to Intel regarding its Core 13th/14th Gen desktop processors are addressed."

That tells me Intel may have discovered multiple bad voltage requests happening, so they're examining all information to ensure they've stamped out every bad request.

 

[hotaru251]

If the problem is on microcode, motherboard type does not matter.

i know that, but what i am saying is even if it was requesting more than mb said in non oc mb's even elevated voltages wouldnt likely push it past an oc voltage that runs stable.

eli5: if ur running an 8 which is default, the error asks for 9 and an oc asks for 10 then even if you getting more than you want it shouldnt have an impact on non oc'd chips as they have plenty of headroom.

 

[umeng2002_2]

I thought it was the cache or the interconnect between CPU and cache that was burning out?

That might be a whole other problem. Or it could contribute to their initial VID table being wrong.

Rusting CPU vias is a feature, not a bug. No one informed the firmware team that the chips are supposed to rust.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Maybe they are searching a way to not hurt performance

With Zen 5 coming out at the end of the month they don't want their CPUs to lose performance. They know reviews are less likely to retest in August so delaying helps them too

 

[JRStern]

Fix this, and see what else, LOL.

 

[bit_user]

Yes all that automatic overclocking every Mobo vender has been doing is having severe consequences to chips. Guaranteed Intel doesn't have a test scenario where the run a chip 20~50% above voltage in high usage scenarios (games) and see what happens.

They do have a lab that tests overclocking on mainstream gaming motherboards, as reported here:

https://www.tomshardware.com/features/inside-intels-secret-overclocking-lab
​

 

[bit_user]

Fix this, and see what else, LOL.

The most charitable interpretation of the delay that I can imagine is that they want to be sure this is the last fix they need to issue for it. They might want to avoid all of the negative publicity that would arise from having to continually iterate on it, and the perceived incompetence that would result.

 

[wingfinger]

Remember the 6 series chipset sata port issue (degradation over time)?

 

[sjkpublic]

Its astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll.....

Are you kidding? For starters the idea that microcode can be updated
is a security hole.

Such sadness. NVidia, AMD, ARM, etc are looking better and better.

 

[SSGBryan]

So, they think they've found the cause and a solution, but they're going to just let this problem fester for another month before a solution can realistically get into the hands of end users??

Wow, I'm sure glad I don't have a Raptor Lake that's continuing to degrade, in the meantime. You'd think they could at least post some tips for enthusiasts to follow, in order to minimize damage until then. I guess the community is left to follow the advice people have discovered on their own.

I'm guessing they're trying to ride a knife's edge of undervolting, to avoid sacrificing either too much performance or risking instability due to too little voltage. I'll bet the voltage window is really narrow, at those higher frequencies. That's the main reason I can see why it'd take them so long to perfect their solution, before letting anyone else even have a beta version.

It isn't festering - they are doing the validation process; that takes time.

 

[Dntknwitall]

This would certainly explain why it has taken so long to narrow down and predominantly affects high clocking chips. The T series may be low power, but they have higher boost clocks than i5s.

So much this as I understand why it's taking so long to fix, but to give no advice as to what to do in the meantime or mitigation techniques is bad. At this point I think Intel needs to add two years to the warranty period for boxed processors.

The company had previously advised its customers to stick with the basic power guidelines for its processors, rather than running them at fully unlocked settings, as it worked through the issues. Those instructions, which you can see here, remain in effect for now, and Intel hasn't issued any new workarounds for impacted customers. It is unclear if Intel will lift the existing restrictions after it issues the patch.

It has been stated over and over on many tech news sites.

 

[Pierce2623]

So when are they going to refund all of us who bought unlocked Raptor Lake chips?

 

[Dntknwitall]

RMA for what? Get another defective same model or a step down to an i7 or i5? Get money back and then swap out the whole platform for AMD? (I know I would if I was one affected by this problem)

I just want to know how Intel is going to make it right for the customers. While that's great that they finally came out and said something, they're leaving too many questions on the table this far into the debacle.

Should have just bought an AMD system to begin with. Intel has done bios updates and said numerous reasons as to why it was happening, yet here they are with another solution that might not fix all the CPUs sold. Intel is on thin ice over this, in my opinion. I'm just glad I do not buy Intel products. It just should have never happened. If it were AMD doing this AMD would be eaten alive by the press and Intel fanboys.

 

[thestryker]

The company had previously advised its customers to stick with the basic power guidelines for its processors, rather than running them at fully unlocked settings, as it worked through the issues. Those instructions, which you can see here, remain in effect for now, and Intel hasn't issued any new workarounds for impacted customers. It is unclear if Intel will lift the existing restrictions after it issues the patch.

It has been stated over and over on many tech news sites.

It appears that you do not understand this issue at all as that will not do anything to prevent this.

 

[TheHerald]

I'm just glad I do not buy Intel products. It just should have never happened. If it were AMD doing this AMD would be eaten alive by the press and Intel fanboys.

Were you glad you weren't buying AMD products back when amd chips immolated themselves and took the mobo alongside them? Please, just stop this fanboy trollish crap.

 

[bit_user]

Its astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll.....

Are you kidding? For starters the idea that microcode can be updated
is a security hole.

Such sadness. NVidia, AMD, ARM, etc are looking better and better.

Uh... what??

Of course microcode can be updated! In some respects, that's very much the point of it! And it's not just Intel - I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a recent model CPU or GPU that doesn't have field-updgradable microcode.

As for whether it's a security hole depends on how it's implemented. I think it's a good bet that most or all such chips implement a crytographic key check, in order to verify its authenticity. Of course, should the master key ever get leaked, that could pose a very big problem, but an attacker would still have to get hacked microcode onto your CPU, and that means overcoming all of the usual protections against a remote attacker executing code with admin privileges.

 

[bit_user]

It isn't festering - they are doing the validation process; that takes time.

Huh? I didn't mean the patch was festering - I meant the problem it's intended to solve. The more that unpatched CPUs are being operated, the more degradation that's occurring to them and the more there are that actually reach a failure state - which then means more warranty returns for Intel and OEMs. Furthermore, if Intel's patch isn't a 100.00% fix, then a partially-degraded CPU could simply end up failing later - perhaps after the warranty period has expired.

So when are they going to refund all of us who bought unlocked Raptor Lake chips?

Why would they do that? They told affected users to contact their customer support. Presumably, they're implying that they will honor the warranty on any of these CPUs that fail. That's what they're on the hook for.

It just should have never happened.

Maybe, but it's really hard to say without knowing the details. They need to do some sort of accelerated longevity testing, where they do predictive failure analysis that involves projecting when failures will occur, but without having to run any CPUs until the point of failure. If they didn't adequately do that, then they really dropped the ball. However, without knowing a lot more about it, I think none of us can say how easy this problem would've been to detect using such a methodology.

This stuff is hard. There are only 3 companies in the world that can build chips at this level.

 

[bit_user]

Were you glad you weren't buying AMD products back when amd chips immolated themselves and took the mobo alongside them?

Please tell us roughly how many times that ever actually happened.

Please, just stop this fanboy trollish crap.

That's some good advice, there.

 

[TheHerald]

Please tell us roughly how many times that ever actually happened.


That's some good advice, there.

What do you mean how many times?

 

[Amdlova]

Wait for the update! Mehhh. When my cpu moves from c7 to c0 I fell the sun think a 13900k

I will wait that micro code update on my h670

 

[NinoPino]

i know that, but what i am saying is even if it was requesting more than mb said in non oc mb's even elevated voltages wouldnt likely push it past an oc voltage that runs stable.

eli5: if ur running an 8 which is default, the error asks for 9 and an oc asks for 10 then even if you getting more than you want it shouldnt have an impact on non oc'd chips as they have plenty of headroom.

Two considerations :
- what the CPU do internally with voltages, only Intel knows. Specifically maybe there are areas of the CPU that need way lower voltage than others and the microcode there wrongly assign voltages
- these CPUs are already pushed at the edge (and imho also over) with speed and voltages that maybe also at default there is little margin.

 

[bit_user]

What do you mean how many times?

It's a very simple, but very important question: roughly how many users were ever affected by that issue?

 

[TheHerald]

It's a very simple, but very important question: roughly how many users were ever affected by that issue?

I've no idea about the exact number - but I'd assume everyone that was pushing 1.4v into their soc.

 

[KyaraM]

Its astounding. Time is fleeting. Madness takes its toll.....

Are you kidding? For starters the idea that microcode can be updated
is a security hole.

Such sadness. NVidia, AMD, ARM, etc are looking better and better.

Dude, do you even know what you are talking about? Everyone does microcode updates...
For starters, look how AMD, which to you looks so much better because they supposedly don't do microcode updates, fixed their overvoltage issues just recently...

 

[TheHerald]

Dude, do you even know what you are talking about? Everyone does microcode updates...
For starters, look how AMD, which to you looks so much better because they supposedly don't do microcode updates, fixed their overvoltage issues just recently...

Yeah, it's not like amd pushes 15 microcode updates with every new generation to fix their crap.

As I've said, this mindless intel bashing needs to stop but it won't. Cultist mentality, what can you do? Then we complain about userbenchmark when 50+% of the forum lurkers are the exact same shills, but just for a different company.