News Puget says its Intel chips failures are lower than Ryzen failures — retailer releases failure rate data, cites conservative power settings

[thestryker]

Im honestly asking, what am I not understanding? The chart says 15 and doesnt say anything about that being that being anything but whats listed. Side note, how are they a profitable business if they're only selling ~15 systems a month?

That is just a list of monthly CPU failures it doesn't indicate total sold unless you compare it to the overall failure percentage graph.

 

[bolweval]

If Puget's statistics are true, then where's the AMD customer posts and outrage then.

Since 1995, I've never had an AMD or Intel CPU fail on me. Had a few GPUs, hard drives and PSUs break though.

Same here but with intel chips, also since 1995..

 

[Capone11]

Puget with the damage control lol.

Puget and Toms knows who butters their bread. Of course they're shilling the damage control.

 

[SunMaster]

many hundreds? they deal with thousands of pcs. come back when you reach their level please.

PSUs fail, motherboards fail (both mostly due to caps), GPUs fail (due to the electronics on the boards) but CPUs are extremely unlikely to fail if operating within the specs. Despite your comment. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone telling you otherwise.

 

[Pierce2623]

This is really interesting, may I ask did you get a metric like Cinebench R23/2024 for a reference point? when they stated that they go on the conservative side and the percentage is at what they reported, that what performance of their system is, if it is stable an reliable at the cost of say, 10% or more copmared to the extreme profile is now, it is not really a fair comparison for consumers, if they release the 13900k getting 30k R23 I bet they will get near as many sales as they did.

Also funny is the total number of systems sent out for the % comparison, if both stayed reasonably low, 10 computers out of 100 failing randomly maybe due to shipment or other parts defect will be 10%, but 10 out of 500 will be 2.5%

Basically they tune them the way Intel non-K chips used to come where they would boost to maximum TDP for like 1-2 minutes then return to the PL1/TDP. It’s also hard for me to judge how much performance that actually cost because the main workload those machines typically run at our office(OpenFoam CFD) is very parallel and gets a huge proportion of its compute from the two GPUs in each workstation.

 

[NinoPino]

Summary: Puget has its own special BIOS that is more conservative than default settings. Intel 13th and 14th chips are still failing at a higher rate than 12th gen.

Puget has its own "special BIOS settings", not "its own special BIOS".

 

[Pierce2623]

The numbers are there for all to see, they publish reviews with their settings.

Yes, the 13900k scores around 30-31k (10 minute test)with the settings they ship them with, but on the same note, the 7950x scores 33k. The difference is 10% in performance, but the zen 4 parts have twice the failure rate.

Also their workstations aren't really targeted at rendering workloads so these numbers are kinda useless. They are targeted at photoshop / premiere / lightroom etc, tasks that the 13900k (with the aforementioned settings) is faster than the 7950x anyways.

Here is their review

13th Gen Intel Core Processors Content Creation Review

Following AMDs recent release of their Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors, Intel is fighting back with their own launch of the Core 13th Gen processors (code named "Raptor Lake"). Unlike AMD's launch which moved to a new socket and added support for DDR5, the 13th Gen CPUs are a drop-in...

www.pugetsystems.com

Everybody knows Intel pays Adobe so they can come out ahead there even when they’re losing in virtually every other workload. There’s no other valid reason that literally all Adobe software heavily favors Intel hardware compared to literally the rest of the software in the world.

 

[NinoPino]

The numbers are there for all to see, they publish reviews with their settings.

Yes, the 13900k scores around 30-31k (10 minute test)with the settings they ship them with, but on the same note, the 7950x scores 33k. The difference is 10% in performance, but the zen 4 parts have twice the failure rate.

Also their workstations aren't really targeted at rendering workloads so these numbers are kinda useless. They are targeted at photoshop / premiere / lightroom etc, tasks that the 13900k (with the aforementioned settings) is faster than the 7950x anyways.

Here is their review

13th Gen Intel Core Processors Content Creation Review

Following AMDs recent release of their Ryzen 7000 Series desktop processors, Intel is fighting back with their own launch of the Core 13th Gen processors (code named "Raptor Lake"). Unlike AMD's launch which moved to a new socket and added support for DDR5, the 13th Gen CPUs are a drop-in...

www.pugetsystems.com

For me the benchmarks of Puget have something strange.
On the review of 14900KS they said something like this : "In heavily multi-threaded workloads like Cinebench, Unreal Engine, V-Ray, and Blender, the 14900KS is a much more significant 6-17% faster than the 14900K. It does especially well in the multi-core rendering benchmarks, averaging a 15% performance increase."
How can be a 14900KS 15% better than a 14900K in MT rendering ?

 

[NinoPino]

This story contradicts Puget's earlier statements. And considering the conflict of interest with Tom's Hardware writers (that are mods on the Intel sub-reddit) censoring genuine questions and complaints on r/Intel, this article is highly suspect.

Interesting, I never known that Tom's writers were also mods on Intel sub-reddit, can you please give some names ?

 

[PaulAlcorn]

This story contradicts Puget's earlier statements. And considering the conflict of interest with Tom's Hardware writers (that are mods on the Intel sub-reddit) censoring genuine questions and complaints on r/Intel, this article is highly suspect.

Thanks for joining our forums today — welcome. We do have a freelancer who mods at the R/Intel and R/Hardware forums, but that work is not at the behest of, or affiliated with, Tom's Hardware as an organization.

And yes, Tom's Hardware is an enthusiast website, so it isn't uncommon for our writers to be active members of the enthusiast community. However, I am not aware of any other staff or freelancers that moderate R/Intel or other reddit subforums.

Albert reviews CPU coolers and SSD coolers, and also does our thermal paste testing. He does not review CPUs or any other products from either Intel or AMD. He also does not write news or any other editorial content outside of those cooler reviews and TIM testing. We purchase his reviews from him, and I think he does damn fine work. I see no reason to change the relationship.

As always, it's best to hear the story from the horse's mouth, rather than statements made without any perspective. Here's Albert's statement on the matter (you'll have to click through to see the image):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1819618929322447291

View: https://x.com/ultrawide219/status/1819618929322447291

 

[rluker5]

I have had two of the Intel CPUs with supposed problems. (reports saying that all 13th and 14th gen CPUs with TDP 65W and higher _could_ be affected). The first CPU was a core i5-13500 in an ASUS ROG STRIX ITX motherboard. I never overclocked the CPU but did overclock RAM to 5600. Ran this CPU for 1 year with no issues and sold to a friend who currently has it and says it's fine. I upgraded that CPU to a Core i7-14700. Again no overclocking except for RAM. I have applied all BIOS updates provided by ASUS to this system. Again, rock solid performance... After hearing all the news about CPU instability I decided to run some stress tests after updating to most recent BIOS. My results:

Cinebench R24 - 1 hour stress. No problems. multi-core score was 1579.
CPU-Z stress test. Ran for 1 hour. No issues. CPU temp went as high as 100C for a bit but leveled out in the high 60s (C).

I did a RESNET50 training on CIFAR data set on CPU (normally would do this on GPU) and that worked fine as well and stressed the CPU for about 50 minutes. Again no issues.

I think most of the problem is people are pushing their CPUs way beyond what they are designed to do. Don't overclock. If you must, overclock your memory. It's a lot cheaper to replace.

R24 is good for stress testing. Good for showing if I've undervolted too far. It also shows how much faster an Nvidia GPU is.

Why on earth should we not trust that intel's own spec and VID written into their CPU is safe? it's like we don't trust Porsche engine can safely rev to 9k rpm.

I highly doubt a Porche could run at 9k for nearly as long as Intel's chips suffered from too high of voltage before failure.

 

[Pierce2623]

So he doesn’t censor dissenting opinions but he was removing early posts/quotes about 14900k instability?

 

[rluker5]

I think a big difference here is that Puget isn't subjecting the Raptor Lakes to too high of voltage. Hopefully the microcode fix works as well. But like Intel already said it won't fix chips already damaged by extended excessive voltage, it will just stop the damage from occurring after the update.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

So he doesn’t censor dissenting opinions but he was removing early posts/quotes about 14900k instability?

To my understanding, he was basically removing a double post that was already posted in another thread. The post was already posted in the *relevant* thread, and that post was NOT removed. It's still there.

This is like daily mod duty stuff. He discussed it directly with the poster in a public forum (see my post above).

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1e9mf04/comment/legdxnk/?context=3

 

[bit_user]

To determine the scale of the findings, we asked Puget about the number of systems the PC builder has shipped.

Wow! @PaulAlcorn , if they're responding to questions, can you please ask them to share timeline data on the AMD failures? Without that, it's hard to read much into the AMD failure rates - were those "shop" failures mostly affecting early batches or did that rate remain relatively constant? Perhaps it could've been exacerbated by bugs or issues in early BIOS or AM5 boards.

Also, I wonder what's their criteria for determining a failure. Could it be as simple as just a single crash during their burn-in testing? If so, do they ever go back and try to reproduce the failure, to be sure it was really caused by a bad CPU and not some other issue?

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Wow! @PaulAlcorn , if they're responding to questions, can you please ask them to share timeline data on the AMD failures? Without that, it's hard to read much into the AMD failure rates - were those "shop" failures mostly affecting early batches or did that rate remain relatively constant? Perhaps it could've been exacerbated by bugs or issues in early BIOS.

Also, I wonder what's their criteria for determining a failure. Could it be as simple as just a single crash during their burn-in testing? If so, do they ever go back and try to reproduce the failure, to be sure it was really caused by a bad CPU and not some other issue?

We do have some follow up Q's for Puget. Yes, they are very forthcoming with more information if requested -- even from the public. Their President is taking questions from the public here:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1819454249698578707

View: https://x.com/jonbach/status/1819454249698578707

 

[Pierce2623]

To my understanding, he was basically removing a double post that was already posted in another thread. The post was already posted in the *relevant* thread, and that post was NOT removed. It's still there.

This is like daily mod duty stuff. He discussed it directly with the poster in a public forum (see my post above).

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1e9mf04/comment/legdxnk/?context=3

Ignore me. I was just being antagonistic for no reason. In fact, I apologize.

 

[PaulAlcorn]

Ignore me. I was just being antagonistic for no reason. In fact, I apologize.

No worries! We value your opinions, even if they're pointed questions — thanks for being such an active member of the forums.

 

[Bamda]

I am waiting for Dr. Lisa Su to issue a recall on my AMD Ryzen 9 7900X any day now. LOL

 

[Albert.Thomas]

Hi folks,

I am the author mentioned in the latest Gamer's Nexus video.

Matt and I already discussed the misunderstanding regarding his removed comment, and I had considered the matter settled. I was caught off guard when I saw how Steve took the incident out of context and misrepresented my actions. Anyone who thinks I am censoring criticism on /r/Intel is mistaken - and at the very least, hasn't actually visisted or looked at the subreddit lately. If they had, they'd know /r/Intel has been on fire with critical threads in the past few months as Intel has utterly fumbled their response to the instability in their CPUs.

In regards to conflicts of interest - after the pitchforks have settled, if y'all truly believe that my position as a moderator is a conflict of interest I am not opposed to stepping down. I have no interest in moderating a community which doesn't want me around.

But I think if you look at my Reddit history, you'll realize it would be a loss for the subreddits that I am an active moderator in. I am very "libertarian" with my approach to moderation and free speech, and if I left I'd likely be replaced with someone with a less laissez faire approach to moderating.

 

[fla56]

High-end PC builder Puget Systems say that its data indicate a lower than expected failure rate for its Intel builds, compared to what’s widely reported.

Puget says its Intel chips failures are lower than Ryzen failures — retailer releases failure rate data, cites conservative power settings : Read more

Er wow, just lost a ton of respect for Puget

101: look at their data, it shows a huge spike in Intel 14th Gen failure in the last few months

And that's with Puget's performance-reducing BIOS tweaks to drop volumes...

 

[fla56]

But neither does AMD, since even with this low performance for the 7950x it still fails at over twice the rate of Intel, right?

Doesn't look like an apples to apples comparison

101: Puget is now seeing a massive spike in Intel 14th Gen failures, just as you would expect -their performance reducing BIOS tweaks have just delayed the burnout

 

[kjfatl]

I would like to see some numbers from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenova and other large PC vendors.
Regardless of the numbers, Intel has damaged their reputation greatly.

 

[Gururu]

I would like to see some numbers from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenova and other large PC vendors.
Regardless of the numbers, Intel has damaged their reputation greatly.

Aside from publishers or developers, what other builders than Puget have disclosed any information? Recent failure rates disclosed in Figure 3 do not establish a significant break from historical Intel or AMD rates shown.

Looks to be about a sample size of at least 1000 for each CPU, which I do agree with them is considerable enough for statistical purposes. HP and Dell likely have far better rates because they probably have many fold that volume for business class applications outside rendering.

 

[vMax]

Long time Intel user with a 13700K and now a 14900K, I have always dropped the vcore down from auto as the motherboards are pushing absurd voltage if left to their stock settings. Always fixed or adaptive with a 1.325v limit.

I cannot believe that there was a 50% failure rate as if so the internet would have blown up a long time ago with way to many 13th and 14th gen enthusiasts running to scream at Intel which is not what happened. This is something that would have hit the message boards and the likes of reddit a long time ago.

And the major vendors all have had problems from AMD, Intel and Nvidia in the past remember when AMD CPU's were not hitting there boost clocks!....they all have had problems in one way or another and it is how they deal with it that will matter. If Intel do not move fast and give refund or replacements to those that have issues then it will cause a lot of lost good will with people changing over to AMD and deservedly so as Intel should be held accountable! The extended warranty is a start but very quickly we will hear from those that are going through the RMA process.

Also the motherboard manufacturers have been pushing these CPU's a bit too hard with excessive voltage and that is all of them as I have used ASUS and now MSI with both pushing 1.4 to 1.5v on auto setting which is absurd. As an enthusiast I have always manually set the voltage and never let it go above 1.35 which is my limit and to be honest it does not need any more than that to get full boost and speed out of these CPU's. My 14900K will boost to 6Ghz on two cores and a 5.6GHz all core with a 41K Cinebench R23 multi core test with temps in check in the low 90's...though with a 360mm AIO though only when testing and under normal conditions I will not go over 253w with the vcore even lower.