News Intel finds root cause of CPU crashing and instability errors, prepares new and final microcode update

[bit_user]

Porsche carera gt comes with a warranty as well and it's supposed to work correctly.

The warranty on a car is for it not to break. Unlike a CPU, it's not a warranty not to crash.

Apart from the basic facts, the comparison is insane! That car is a sports car that costs many times what a normal passenger car would. Everyone knows a super-fast car is dangerous. By contrast, a CPU that has a "K" on the end of its model name has no such connotation that it might just randomly fail to work correctly.

The analogy to what you're saying is if Toyota had a Camry model S, which cost only 10% more than the regular Camry, yet lacks many of the safety features and still has no sort of warning label to advise the driver of this fact. Even then, it's a stretch.

It's really quite telling how far you're trying to advance this narrative. You can't argue the facts, so you turn to a ridiculous analogy to support your victim-blaming.

 

[YSCCC]

Porsche carera gt comes with a warranty as well and it's supposed to work correctly. Still if you don't know how to drive, kaboom. It has no warning sticker either.

Porsche do include a hard printed manual in every carrera to tell you when to start driving in higher Rev after running in period and if you want to go Tracking, get another spec oil for protection so the engine won’t blown up, meanwhile Intel have nothing hard printed and read before use in the box.

Plus they recall if something safety related is found even it only “affects a minor number of vehicles” like the Tycan brake issues.

Cough now you compare that to Intel RPL

 

[TheHerald]

The warranty on a car is for it not to break. Unlike a CPU, it's not a warranty not to crash.

Apart from the basic facts, the comparison is insane! That car is a sports car that costs many times what a normal passenger car would. Everyone knows a super-fast car is dangerous. By contrast, a CPU that has a "K" on the end of its model name has no such connotation that it might just randomly fail to work correctly.

The analogy to what you're saying is if Toyota had a Camry model S, which cost only 10% more than the regular Camry, yet lacks many of the safety features and still has no sort of warning label to advise the driver of this fact. Even then, it's a stretch.

It's really quite telling how far you're trying to advance this narrative. You can't argue the facts, so you turn to a ridiculous analogy to support your victim-blaming.

Really? A cpu with all safety power and amperage limits removed while being slapped to a huge 360 AIO and you are thinking to yourself "it's going to be fine"?

Silly voltages at stock / xmp has been a thing since at least skylake back in 2015. Enabling xmp on a 4400mhz ddr4 kit on my 8700k resulted in 1.64 IO voltage. That's well beyond instakill territory btw. And of course we have the recent x3d fiasco with the cpus doing BBQ.

The proof is in the pudding, most people complaining don't even have the cpus in question. They are just complaining. Well, keep at it.

 

[rluker5]

The basis is that real people were experiencing the failures and OEMs were reportedly saying they thought "between 10 and 25% of CPUs have a problem or are marginal in some way."

Source:

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It's not zero evidence.

There's a basic contradiction in your statement. You're attacking people for over-hyping it without data, but you also lack the data to say that it is being over-hyped. All we can say is that we don't know how big it'd have been without Intel's mitigations and pressuring board makers to dial back their defaults. Absent the data, you don't get to presume an outcome in your favor.

P.S. it's no surprise @rluker5 is backing you on this. He tried to deny it even after Intel had publicly come out and admitted it! So, you've got a nice little Flat Earth faction going.

Your source stated that "I'm not really sure that I got good intel from those companies but the intel that I did get said that well you can expect between 10 and 25% of CPUs have a problem or are marginal in some way and we're not really sure what the root issue is. Do they say clearly if it is a motherboard problem or an Intel CPU problem? The messaging seems to be that it is a little of column A and a little of column B."

Also your source has a well known AMD bias. But he is clearly not explicitly lying as he parsed his words to the point of not being able to be used as a source for what you claim is the case. Wendel said he wasn't sure so you need to find another source to not just be making things up.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Great.. Another BIOS flash. I hate MB flashing, a few bad outcomes in the past. Not to mention we have to wait for OEMs to create the new firmware, if they even do.

 

[rluker5]

Really? A cpu with all safety power and amperage limits removed while being slapped to a huge 360 AIO and you are thinking to yourself "it's going to be fine"?

Silly voltages at stock / xmp has been a thing since at least skylake back in 2015. Enabling xmp on a 4400mhz ddr4 kit on my 8700k resulted in 1.64 IO voltage. That's well beyond instakill territory btw. And of course we have the recent x3d fiasco with the cpus doing BBQ.

The proof is in the pudding, most people complaining don't even have the cpus in question. They are just complaining. Well, keep at it.

I get 1.563v on my memory controller with stock / XMP with my Prime Z690 P + Gskill 64GB (2 sticks) 6400 combination. Kind of relieved to hear it isn't just me, but also more bothered to hear it isn't just me.

Also I turned that down below 1.4v as soon as I noticed.

 

[TheHerald]

I get 1.563v on my memory controller with stock / XMP with my Prime Z690 P + Gskill 64GB (2 sticks) 6400 combination. Kind of relieved to hear it isn't just me, but also more bothered to hear it isn't just me.

Also I turned that down below 1.4v as soon as I noticed.

I don't dare try enabling XMP on my 12900k, Im pretty confident that it won't even make it back into the bios (7600mhz ddr5 kit).

Which is my point, non k chips have an IO voltage cap of 1.05v, if you don't want to risk messing up stuff you just buy those. I don't get what this whole ordeal is.

Just to recap, the problem is that specific K intel chips (with specific unlocked mobos I assume?) from the RPL generation push unsafe voltages out of the box and instead of intel admitting it's their problem they initially blamed the mobo manafacturers? That's the whole issue here, if I understand it correctly?

EG1. You should turn down your IO to 1.25v or even less. Doesn't need anywhere near 1.4 for 6400. You are on RPL right?

 

[Elusive Ruse]

The warranty on a car is for it not to break. Unlike a CPU, it's not a warranty not to crash.

Apart from the basic facts, the comparison is insane! That car is a sports car that costs many times what a normal passenger car would. Everyone knows a super-fast car is dangerous. By contrast, a CPU that has a "K" on the end of its model name has no such connotation that it might just randomly fail to work correctly.

The analogy to what you're saying is if Toyota had a Camry model S, which cost only 10% more than the regular Camry, yet lacks many of the safety features and still has no sort of warning label to advise the driver of this fact. Even then, it's a stretch.

It's really quite telling how far you're trying to advance this narrative. You can't argue the facts, so you turn to a ridiculous analogy to support your victim-blaming.

Not to mention that Porsche makes the engine and the chassis. A more relevant analogy would be if the Mercedes engine in Astons kept degrading themselves and Mercedes blamed Aston Martin for not putting a hard rev limit (just an example) on the engines despite their own documentation showing they were in spec; then they’d be laughed out and Aston would go get their engines from someone else.

 

[bit_user]

Really? A cpu with all safety power and amperage limits removed while being slapped to a huge 360 AIO and you are thinking to yourself "it's going to be fine"?

K-series CPUs aren't special, in that regard. You can also set whatever PL you want, even on non-K CPUs!

 

[rluker5]

I don't dare try enabling XMP on my 12900k, Im pretty confident that it won't even make it back into the bios (7600mhz ddr5 kit).

Which is my point, non k chips have an IO voltage cap of 1.05v, if you don't want to risk messing up stuff you just buy those. I don't get what this whole ordeal is.

Just to recap, the problem is that specific K intel chips (with specific unlocked mobos I assume?) from the RPL generation push unsafe voltages out of the box and instead of intel admitting it's their problem they initially blamed the mobo manafacturers? That's the whole issue here, if I understand it correctly?

EG1. You should turn down your IO to 1.25v or even less. Doesn't need anywhere near 1.4 for 6400. You are on RPL right?

I'm running 2R, 32GB per stick ram with my 13900kf (impulse buy) so I need more voltage to the IMC than the 1R ram I moved to my living room 13600k itx. The motherboard apparently knows this when the XMP profile is enabled and adds the voltage. I don't even want to know what 2R, 2DPC would want.

In retrospect that impulse buy wasn't worth it. Just using half of it in a ram cache.

 

[cyrusfox]

I'll wait for the drop, been running 129 for 6 weeks already. Be happy to retire this platform and move on though hopefully to arrowlake, Will be weird to run Intel designed TSMC chips. Bummed about Intel 20A not materializing

 

[bit_user]

In retrospect that impulse buy wasn't worth it. Just using half of it in a ram cache.

That's funny. I bought 2R memory just for the performance benefits over 1R. Maybe not if you overclock, where 1R DIMMs tend to clock higher, but I don't.

I don't actually need 64 GiB. 16 would be enough for me, currently. If I'm buying for the next 5 years, I'd get 32 GiB. I never expect I'll need 64 GiB.

 

[logainofhades]

Playing WoW, having Discord going, and Chrome running, I have seen ram usage over 16gb. I only have 64gb because the rig I won had it. Previous rig had 32gb, as does my laptop.

 

[rluker5]

That's funny. I bought 2R memory just for the performance benefits over 1R. Maybe not if you overclock, where 1R DIMMs tend to clock higher, but I don't.

I don't actually need 64 GiB. 16 would be enough for me, currently. If I'm buying for the next 5 years, I'd get 32 GiB. I never expect I'll need 64 GiB.

I do overclock, albeit not much. I like to think it is because of my low end Z690 boards but that might just be rationalization for something else. But after that I don't see much performance difference going from 32GB to 64GB Gskill Trident 6400. But my other RPL had some Micron ICs and the Hynix ICs were definitely an improvement over those when I shuffled them over there so it wasn't a total loss.

Edit: Just out of curiosity I did have all 96 GB running in my Prime P at the same time but I was running like 4800 and I was having a hard time lowering the latency. The 32GB is M die and I suspect the 64GB is A. That combo really isn't worth it for me.

 

[bit_user]

Playing WoW,

Heh, you already lost me. I haven't played a PC game in 15 years.

The most ridiculous thing I did was putting 32 GiB in a quad-core Alder Lake-N mini-PC. It takes only 1 DIMM and has only integrated graphics, so I wanted to minimize any bottleneck on RAM by using dual-rank. Additionally, there's something funky going on with 16 GiB DDR5 DIMMs, since they're using only 4 chips, so I definitely didn't want to go that route.

 

[YSCCC]

K-series CPUs aren't special, in that regard. You can also set whatever PL you want, even on non-K CPUs!

And non k series skus are also reported to be degrading, so anyway

 

[thestryker]

Mate, TH's own @JarredWaltonGPU had to RMA his CPU due to the same issue, this is not some smear campaign against Intel.

A lot of reading comprehension problems around these parts. I said the scale is overblown and the way a lot of people are acting is like every CPU is a ticking time bomb that are going to die.

 

[thestryker]

As for retails not selling them, please explain why. Retailers basically have no skin in the game, other than product A using up shelf space that could instead be used for better-selling product B. Why would a retailer not sell a product (in the US, at least), where the burden really falls on the manufacturer, if the product is defective?

They sell a lot of PCs with them, including in house along with the retail products. It's not in their best interest to create angry customers. Had you taken a minute to think out it you should have been able to figure that one out on your own.

 

[thestryker]

O, it must be because TH team have no idea of what to set up a bios and shouldn’t buy a k SKU

O wait, they are the reviewers who should know.🤐

I know this was tongue and cheek, but he flat out admitted he was running with good cooling and unlimited everything until problems started cropping up.

 

[thestryker]

It's not zero evidence.

There's a basic contradiction in your statement. You're attacking people for over-hyping it without data, but you also lack the data to say that it is being over-hyped. All we can say is that we don't know how big it'd have been without Intel's mitigations and pressuring board makers to dial back their defaults. Absent the data, you don't get to presume an outcome in your favor.

And yet you're defending presuming you're right talk about a massive amount of hypocrisy right here.

At least my stance is based upon what information is available rather than using confirmation bias to yell the sky is falling.

 

[thestryker]

Actually the mere fact that right now, 2 months from the admission of such issues, they have ran out of i9 for replacement worldwide, left and right, that alone says it isn’t as minor in percentage. Not to say the more frequent reporting of RMA getting hold on somewhere and need emailing back and forth for more than a month to get respond.

They've been acknowledging issues for a lot longer than 2 months. As I'm sure you've also seen in this same reporting they've been doing very little due diligence more recently before replacing CPUs. Once again someone is picking and choosing information to back your point while ignoring other plausible causes.

 

[YSCCC]

I know this was tongue in cheek, but he flat out admitted he was running with good cooling and unlimited everything until problems started cropping up.

As far as Intel’s latest own disclosure, it is actually the voltage killing the CPUs and not really wattage. The KS actually is rated for 320w and literally being a high binned 14900k there is no way that 14900k would be degrading with that wattage in such short duration.

And for the usage pattern, in a tech site with even gpu testing suites, the cpu will rarely hit over 150w. Only those avx workload will really get over wattage, but the vid is completely built in Intel microcode, which isn’t motherboard issue

 

[YSCCC]

They've been acknowledging issues for a lot longer than 2 months. As I'm sure you've also seen in this same reporting they've been doing very little due diligence more recently before replacing CPUs. Once again someone is picking and choosing information to back your point while ignoring other plausible causes.

At least when I aware since july, they will need you to run intel diagnostics tool to verify the cpu have degraded, that’s not with little due diligence.

The last sentence can also be used for those saying intel have nothing serious in % failure

 

[YSCCC]

Seems like you didn't actually even bother reading what they said then:


Except that there's no evidence to support widespread failure rates. People complaining on the internet is hardly a reliable measure of anything.

I'm referring to stories like this popping up https://wccftech.com/customer-gets-intel-core-i9-14900k-rma-faulty-core-i9-13900k-full-refunds/

They just kept their original blame the motherboard wordings and not taking that back, they first deny any degradation happens, then comes saying it’s the pl limit and kept that for some time.

Then comes a few months later and all the mitigations are voltage related.

They won’t take that back even if it wasn’t a real cause as they’ve been pushing it’s the pl limit fault for so long that they can be in big trouble if they take that back.

And in all sense I literally have a friend having 13900k degraded and beside the original benchmarking running they only use it for gaming, which according to hwinfo max out around 120w.

And for god sake the real power draw of 14900k, running unlimited pl, would have a tough time going through 320w even with the default vid and frequencies beside benchmarking AVX stuffs, maxing all cores 5.7 and with default avx offset would sit around be around 300w, given that the same but better binned chip is still rated for 320w pl1=pl2, there is no sense that such power will result in so many failures. Given that their new microcode capping the voltage called did restrict the max boost frequency but they didn’t lower the 14900ks pl, it is very logical it is the stupid VID that is the main culprit, and the power limit is at best, a slight booster, you rarely hit the pl even for use case of TH, but you keep hitting the voltage surge whenever you launch something from idle.

Well, if that the running out of replacement isn’t a good enough indicator, nothing in your book except maybe Intel come out saying we have saw 20x more failure rate in RPL will be evidence to you, which they might only tell 3 generations later, but then one would say “nah it’s history, nvm”

 

[rdyaia]

Is Intel going to offer an app to test if the chip is defective? I have had a couple of BSOD's, but really can't afford to be without my PC while I return it to Intel and wait for them to test it and then finally ship a replacement or return the original, if it tests OK. If there is a user test available, could someone please share a link to it? Thanks.