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

[stuff and nonesense]

It actually was EXPO.

"We do know that 1.25V is the recommended safe SoC voltage limit, and we're told that 1.4V and beyond definitely increases the likelihood of the condition occurring. To be clear, running beyond 1.4V doesn't ensure that your chip will burn out, but your odds will increase. Conversely, 1.35V appears to be "safe." Proceed at your own risk, though. [EDIT: AMD has issued a statement, clarifying that it will issue firmwares that limit SoC voltage to 1.3V. As such, this appears to be the maximum safe limit.]"

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/a...use-identified-expo-and-soc-voltages-to-blame

Nope, the reply was to a reference mentioning Ryzen 5000. Expo is a ddr 5, Ryzen 7000 tech.

 

[KyaraM]

The CPU microcode asks for certain voltages (power) based on clock speed and thermal headroom. High (or unlimited) values are board imposed "limits" not the actual values the CPU should be using. Intel already acknowledge this fact on the published statements.

Reviews reporting high power usage have been published since those CPUs where released and Intel was very happy with them and do nothing to correct it. Intel endorsed and explained that those high power levels where OK and working as designed.

Explanation here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWQLFWbQY8&t=13s

And what exactly does any of what you said there has anything to do with my mainboard letting the user choose which power limits to apply? Right, absolutely nothing. Read before posting.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Nope, the reply was to a reference mentioning Ryzen 5000. Expo is a ddr 5, Ryzen 7000 tech.

As far as I can see TheHerald was originally talking about the Ryzen 7000X3D chips that had burnout. Overall it ended up being that boards pushed more voltage than they should have.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

As far as I can see TheHerald was originally talking about the Ryzen 7000X3D chips that had burnout. Overall it ended up being that boards pushed more voltage than they should have.

Comment 198,

The AMD defined maximum safe SOC voltage for Ryzen 5000 is 1.2-1.25V and no motherboard maker pushed SOC voltage further than that. So how is the user overclocking SOC to 1.4V the same as Intel bricking itself with too high a voltage right out of the box?

Nobody overclocked, the soc was set tot 1.4v just by enabling xmp

 

[TheHerald]

Perhaps you mean PBO….?

Nope, XMP pushed voltages to 1.4v +. That's how the amd chips turned into handgrenades.

 

[thestryker]

AT that time he described the spec and how they got rid of the "offset" and just flaat out put 1.72v. I don't hear anything in that specific time that goes against anything I wrote for #1.

At that time he literally describes 14900KS CPUs coming with a set VID over 1.5v. There's no way that part happens without Intel. knowing about it.

And if it wasn't clear for #2: CPUs which have been damaged due to the issue, if Intel says "ok, now it is fixed" and people gets degradation down the line outside of warranty, they'll be left with a defective CPU and that is saving Intel money.

The ideal scenario is for Intel to just recall all CPUs for people that is unsure if their CPUs are affected, because how can a normal user know? Will they ever know? Will SIs do right by them after applying "the fix"? Will SIs be willing to replace their pre-builts after this? Will Intel play ball with SIs? How will Intel reach out to the media to address this? Etc.

The real people affected by this are not enthusiasts, but "regular" people that are probably getting crashes and gremlins and have no idea why. Those are the people Intel needs to do right by first, since Enthusiasts will be able to RMA with no problems, I'm sure.

I mean this is all true, but it also implies a world we simply don't live in. You seem to want/expect Intel to behave not like a company.

Who knows what sort of ancillary damage may have been done to CPUs/motherboards when AMD had the SoC voltage situation. None of those were getting replaced unless they failed, because that's how business is done. It's very likely going to be the same situation here where failed boxed parts with warranties get replaced and Intel will probably let SIs choose how to handle their end.

Now of course as I said in my first post this thread Intel absolutely should extend boxed CPU warranty, but I don't rally think they will. SIs should also be proactive about their customers, and I have no doubt Intel would supply at least the big ones with as many CPUs as they needed, but I doubt they will do much of anything unless systems are still under warranty or from their big customers.

This is the reality we live in as no company will ever disclose anything they don't need to. In this circumstance no disclosure would do anything other than potentially provide ammo for a future class action which would never actually help anyone. Intel still wouldn't replace parts that weren't showing degradation effects no matter the underlying cause.

 

[thestryker]

The AMD defined maximum safe SOC voltage for Ryzen 5000 is 1.2-1.25V and no motherboard maker pushed SOC voltage further than that. So how is the user overclocking SOC to 1.4V the same as Intel bricking itself with too high a voltage right out of the box?

You're completely right, but even though it wasn't explicitly stated they were talking about Zen 4 not Zen 3. I don't recall if it was that AMD didn't give guidance or gave the wrong guidance on Zen 4, but some motherboard manufacturers had SoC voltage set to go above safe ranges when XMP/EXPO were enabled because it gave guaranteed stability. This was figured out pretty quickly and avoidance advice was given right away. AMD later pushed a beta AGESA before finalizing with a cap on SoC voltage.

 

[jeremyj_83]

Comment 198,


Nobody overclocked, the soc was set tot 1.4v just by enabling xmp

The entire voltage thing he was talking about went WAY before comment #198. You have to look back to the first few pages in the thread and you will see he brought it up way back then and was talking about 7000X3D.

 

[-Fran-]

I mean this is all true, but it also implies a world we simply don't live in. You seem to want/expect Intel to behave not like a company.

I'm going to focus on only this statement, as I strongly believe we need to shift from this mindset.

The reason why Companies behave like that is because we allow them to. As I always say: beaten wife syndrome.

Not singling you out, but just making you aware that it's ok to demand Companies/Coporations to be better to us, the consumers. We just need to change the mindset a bit.

Regards.

 

[thestryker]

I'm going to focus on only this statement, as I strongly believe we need to shift from this mindset.

The reason why Companies behave like that is because we allow them to. As I always say: beaten wife syndrome.

Not singling you out, but just making you aware that it's ok to demand Companies/Coporations to be better to us, the consumers. We just need to change the mindset a bit.

Regards.

Publicly traded companies will never change until their investors do and there's no chance of that happening. So now we're talking about changing a system (that desperately needs changing) that most people have zero influence over. Every enthusiast computer user could stop buying Intel tomorrow and it wouldn't change anything. Just take a look at how long it took Intel to make any sort of definitive statements on this issue it wasn't until the laptop side of things got targeted.

That's the crux of the matter: until/unless the business itself is threatened they don't do anything beyond the minimum. The only exceptions to this I've seen in recent years is by privately owned companies.

 

[YSCCC]

This update obviously injected utmost faith in the upcoming arrow lake release.... personally I have had enough of the 12th gen first 6 months of constant instability, if the 14900k is burnt in my z690, go F it and AMD we go

 

[35below0]

Personally, I haven't yet decided what to do with the cpu and the motherboard as I'm figuring out what Intel will or will not do. There is another option involving the online store from which the cpu was bought from, which I haven't yet wanted to explore.

Some people might start selling their cpus/mobos pretty soon. You think this will not happen? Let's watch the second hand marked.

I don't know.

People with affected CPUs will certainly want to do something. Or put it another way, they will want Intel to do something.

We don't know the percentage of 13th and 14th gen i7 and i9 CPU that were faulty and caused stability issues. They aren't all affected BUT we also haven't been reliably informed whether all such CPUs can potentially degrade or become damaged (a huge number of CPUs!), or how many CPUs are silently degenerating and will become unstable in the coming years.

CPUs are usually bulletproof and never have to be replaced due to failure.
People stuck with a DUD Intel will be watching the news from Intel closely, and the news will basically have to be a free replacement or recall of some kind.

What Intel is going to offer as a replacement is probably what they're scratching their watch and winding their ass trying to figure out right now.
Stable CPUs are either two generations old and their performance is much worse, or belong to a new, incompatible socket.

Or they push an update that stops the rot and replace the CPUs that have been affected the worst.
Your guess is as good as mine.


Also, unrelated to anything in particular, but there is an "ignore" button on the forum. It's in a menu that opens when you click on a user avatar.

 

[Geekaycee]

I don't know.

People with affected CPUs will certainly want to do something. Or put it another way, they will want Intel to do something.

We don't know the percentage of 13th and 14th gen i7 and i9 CPU that were faulty and caused stability issues. They aren't all affected BUT we also haven't been reliably informed whether all such CPUs can potentially degrade or become damaged (a huge number of CPUs!), or how many CPUs are silently degenerating and will become unstable in the coming years.

CPUs are usually bulletproof and never have to be replaced due to failure.
People stuck with a DUD Intel will be watching the news from Intel closely, and the news will basically have to be a free replacement or recall of some kind.

What Intel is going to offer as a replacement is probably what they're scratching their watch and winding their ass trying to figure out right now.
Stable CPUs are either two generations old and their performance is much worse, or belong to a new, incompatible socket.

Or they push an update that stops the rot and replace the CPUs that have been affected the worst.
Your guess is as good as mine.


Also, unrelated to anything in particular, but there is an "ignore" button on the forum. It's in a menu that opens when you click on a user avatar.

Thank you for the last one, I know exactly which user to apply this option to.

 

[Moonstick2]

It doesn't lose performance. It just requires more voltage as time passes.

I don't have the data, you need to ask amd or intel for specifics.

No need for anybody to involve AMD or Intel. HWInfo64 provides plenty of access to all sorts of sensors including those that sense voltage.

If an end user cannot measurably tell the difference between a brand new chip and a chip one day old, then contrary to your claim, it's as good as new.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Derbauer has a good video out on YouTube describing the copper via problem, comes with interesting photographs too.

 

[TheHerald]

No need for anybody to involve AMD or Intel. HWInfo64 provides plenty of access to all sorts of sensors including those that sense voltage.

If an end user cannot measurably tell the difference between a brand new chip and a chip one day old, then contrary to your claim, it's as good as new.

Well it all depends on what you mean by measurably. I can quite clearly tell the degradation on mine, can even give you min voltages for specific clockspeeds etc. - how they were day 1 and how they are today.

 

[Moonstick2]

Well it all depends on what you mean by measurably. I can quite clearly tell the degradation on mine, can even give you min voltages for specific clockspeeds etc. - how they were day 1 and how they are today.

I mean a difference that shows up between measurements and can with confidence be stated to be a real difference rather than an uncertainty or measurement error.

You stated "No cpu will be as good as new after even 1 day of usage." So what were those minimum voltages on day 2, not today? Or, what would be the difference if you took the change from Day 1 to today and divided it by the number of days you've had it? I feel confident in saying the per-day change is going to be so small it couldn't be detected, meaning after one day of usage, a CPU will still be as good as new, like how a bucket containing a single grain of rice is still as good as empty.

I think many people are right to feel aggrieved about excessive degradation of their CPUs. And Intel certainly don't seem to think much of this is reasonable and normal.

 

[BTKay]

Intel may have told you that I should contact support and get the malfunctioning processor replaced now, but that's apparently not what they told Dell. When I contacted Dell they acknowledged receiving instructions from Intel, but not that the processor should be replaced. They told me that the Intel update expected in August would resolve my issue, which is in direct contradiction to what your article said. They were not impressed when I told them your article indicated otherwise.

 

[thestryker]

Intel may have told you that I should contact support and get the malfunctioning processor replaced now, but that's apparently not what they told Dell. When I contacted Dell they acknowledged receiving instructions from Intel, but not that the processor should be replaced. They told me that the Intel update expected in August would resolve my issue, which is in direct contradiction to what your article said. They were not impressed when I told them your article indicated otherwise.

Intel's replacement advice is with regards to when you're dealing with Intel directly as that's the return system they have control over. Dell is trying to mitigate the amount of money this costs them so it's not surprising that they're pushing back. I'd suggest waiting for the August update and if it doesn't resolve whatever you're seeing contact them again.

Forgot to add this: https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/26/24206529/intel-13th-14th-gen-crashing-instability-cpu-voltage-q-a

 

[hardwareuserr]

That's cause Intel is run by a whacko christian evangelical wingnut, Patrick Gelsinger. If he was immediately fired w/out pay, they would certainly do better.

 

[TheHerald]

I mean a difference that shows up between measurements and can with confidence be stated to be a real difference rather than an uncertainty or measurement error.

You stated "No cpu will be as good as new after even 1 day of usage." So what were those minimum voltages on day 2, not today? Or, what would be the difference if you took the change from Day 1 to today and divided it by the number of days you've had it? I feel confident in saying the per-day change is going to be so small it couldn't be detected, meaning after one day of usage, a CPU will still be as good as new, like how a bucket containing a single grain of rice is still as good as empty.

I think many people are right to feel aggrieved about excessive degradation of their CPUs. And Intel certainly don't seem to think much of this is reasonable and normal.

What I've seen (and it seems to be relevant to the current 13 and 14th gen issues) is because the whole CPU is fed by a single rail, cache is the one that degrades due to elevated voltages. From some tests I have conducted on my 12900k - 1.4v or higher instantly degrades the cache - even at very very light workloads (less than 100w power draw).

@bit_user Remember when I was telling you that intel uses a single rail for it's chips? Seems like that's what's causing the issues, the cache can't take the voltages that the cores are capable of and kaput.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

That's cause Intel is run by a whacko christian evangelical wingnut, Patrick Gelsinger. If he was immediately fired w/out pay, they would certainly do better.

What???? Regardless of his personal beliefs, Pat Gelsinger is a very accomplished micro-architecture engineer that worked on the i386 processor, was lead architect of i486, and pioneered the Core and Xeon series of chips for Intel.
When Pat was given the reigns of Intel, he inherited a company that was gutted of many engineering divisions and bloated with sales, marketing, and corporate excess. The former CEO knew nothing about micro-architectures and used the fact that AMD couldn’t compete with Intel to dismantle the engineering division and hire a bunch of “his kind of people” aka business degrees that went on to devise shady marketing schemes to make Intel a de-facto monopoly like paying Dell, HP, etc. to exclusively use Intel processors. This is the era of skylake, skylake +, skylake ++, skylake +++, skylake ++++. Intel’s shareholders finally acted when they saw that Intel was no longer tech focused and that their foundries were failing to introduce new node shrinks without having to re-iterate multiple times just to get a working process to use.

So how about you give Pat the benefit of the doubt. It takes a lot of strength and patience to fix all of that while laying the groundwork for a successful and innovative Intel well into the future.

 

[CelicaGT]

Intel may have told you that I should contact support and get the malfunctioning processor replaced now, but that's apparently not what they told Dell. When I contacted Dell they acknowledged receiving instructions from Intel, but not that the processor should be replaced. They told me that the Intel update expected in August would resolve my issue, which is in direct contradiction to what your article said. They were not impressed when I told them your article indicated otherwise.

Perhaps email Intel's official public statement to them. Should clear things up. Dell is hoping to ride the ignorant consumer train to mitigate costs and it will probably work..

 

[bit_user]

Intel may have told you that I should contact support and get the malfunctioning processor replaced now, but that's apparently not what they told Dell. When I contacted Dell they acknowledged receiving instructions from Intel, but not that the processor should be replaced. They told me that the Intel update expected in August would resolve my issue, which is in direct contradiction to what your article said. They were not impressed when I told them your article indicated otherwise.

Unfortunately, Intel CPUs sold to OEMs are warrantied by the OEM. Only retail-boxed CPUs are warrantied directly through Intel. I would imagine each big OEM will probably have some arrangement worked out with Intel, to partially compensate for any products with abnormally high failure rates. But, even then, the OEM will still have some skin in the game.

So, regardless of what Intel says, you're really at the mercy of the OEM and their warranty policies. Dell apparently wants to wait and see how many of its customers the microcode update will take care of, in order to minimize their own cost of having to deal with a flood of RMAs.

 

[35below0]

What???? Regardless of his personal beliefs, Pat Gelsinger is a very accomplished micro-architecture engineer that worked on the i386 processor, was lead architect of i486, and pioneered the Core and Xeon series of chips for Intel.
When Pat was given the reigns of Intel, he inherited a company that was gutted of many engineering divisions and bloated with sales, marketing, and corporate excess. The former CEO knew nothing about micro-architectures and used the fact that AMD couldn’t compete with Intel to dismantle the engineering division and hire a bunch of “his kind of people” aka business degrees that went on to devise shady marketing schemes to make Intel a de-facto monopoly like paying Dell, HP, etc. to exclusively use Intel processors. This is the era of skylake, skylake +, skylake ++, skylake +++, skylake ++++. Intel’s shareholders finally acted when they saw that Intel was no longer tech focused and that their foundries were failing to introduce new node shrinks without having to re-iterate multiple times just to get a working process to use.

So how about you give Pat the benefit of the doubt. It takes a lot of strength and patience to fix all of that while laying the groundwork for a successful and innovative Intel well into the future.

Don't take the troll bait.