And how can we be comfortable with Intel products now?
We don't. They knew about the issue pre-release and released a known lemon, plan to sweep things under the rug, and nothing short of a massive hammer by class action or regulators will change their mind.
Intel is the Boeing of the computer world.
Current theory is the ring bus is getting cooked
Quote:
MLID's sources said that the "leading theory inside Intel right now" is that the Ring Bus is "getting cooked because it's fed the by the same rail as the P-Cores and E-Cores". Intel's 13th Gen Core "Raptor Lake" CPUs needed to hit incredible high voltages in order to "be competitive" with AMD's new Zen 4 platform at the time.
The first source of MLID says that "it seems like it was just pushed too hard" continuing that this is just an "inherent flaw that would be in Barlett Lake too IF it's overvolted". The source continued, saying that Meteor Lake "isn't affected".
The second source said: "I never worked directly on Raptor Lake (Intel Design Engineer), but I did have exposure to Alder Lake, and I can confirm that they were very concerned about the ring bus getting damaged if the voltage was pushed too high. I can also confirm that Raptor Lake was rushed through the design and validation process".
MLID's third source said: (Intel Foundry Services) can tell you that Raptor Lake was rushed through our Fab in Arizona in record time, but it's also produced in other fabs. However, this location (Arizona) is notable because I can confirm that there was an Oxidation issue by some failure in our HVAC system between March & June 2023. It was so bad that Keyvan Esfarjani had to fly in to make a decision about which wafers (which cost as much as Model X each) needed to be thrown away. To be clear, I don't know what decision was made, but I do know that this event DID happen. And by the way, it affected Sapphire Rapids yields as well, although I doubt it's an issue wasn't fixed by now".
How many chips does Intel estimate are likely to be irreversibly impacted by these issues?
Intel Core 13th and 14th Generation desktop processors with 65W or higher base power – including K/KF/KS and 65W non-K variants – could be affected by the elevated voltages issue. However, this does not mean that all processors listed are (or will be) impacted by the elevated voltages issue.
Intel continues validation to ensure that scenarios of instability reported to Intel regarding its Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors are addressed.
For customers who are or have been experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors, Intel continues advising them to reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance. Additionally, if customers have experienced these instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors but had RMA [return merchandise authorization] requests rejected we ask that they reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance and remediation.
Will Intel issue a recall?
No.
Has Intel halted sales and / or performed any channel inventory recalls while it validates the update?
Among other rumors is that laptop parts will be impacted. OEMs will be pissed.
EDIT: Intel appears to be denying pre-built PCs warranty replacements and a lot of those PCs are out of the one year warranty. The 15% workforce reduction appears to be them worrying that they won't be able to meet warranty obligations for basically 3/4 of two generations of CPU SKUs, and building up enough reserves to weather the storm of lawsuits. Keeping the MBAs and accountants, they aren't planning on engineering their way out of their mess that's for sure.
So sounds like an okay generation for AMD laptops, but not great for anything else. We'll see how this goes.
In other news. Intel shareholders are suing the company for hiding the extent of the 13/14th gen problems and destroying shareholder value amid $32B+ in market losses and 15% staff headcount reduction. This all happened while CEO Pat Gelsinger took his 45% pay raise.
Sounds like some Intel users might need to be more careful with their settings to make sure they aren't accidentally going over the safe voltage level.
I bough a fv43u. My office nook is in a cubby (4’x5’), and in the process of building it.
I’m looking for a 200x200 vesa mount, with slight vertical adjustment.
Now because of the confined space, I’d prefer the mount to be a quick release design. It’ll be tricky mounting it. Would rather just slide it/couple it, and screw the QR. Using traditional screw in to vesa mount will be nay impossible with this desk setup.
I found this model but not confident in its long term strength, on first glances.
Well this wasn’t an email I was hoping to get. I’ve had my 13700k for about a year and a half.
I don’t have to deal with constant crashing but I have got random resets and BSODs in the past. Nothing while gaming though. I’ve had problems with ZBrush freezing my PC this week but I found not using Dynamesh fixed the problem.
I did try running Cinebench to see if my score has gone down but it crashes about 10 seconds in. I haven’t used it probably the first month I got my PC when I was playing with undervolting and CPU Lite mode in the MSI bios.
AMD responds to Ryzen 9000 series performance issues, says that Windows 11 version 23H2 from 2023 doesn't have the necessary code to operate 9000 series chips at the full capacity as it doesn't let the chips use the new branch prediction improvements.
Windows 11 24H2, which is still stuck in 'Windows Insider' Beta program, has the necessary code, and sees significantly greater performance uplift in games. (AMD claims ~9% average generation uplift over Ryzen 7000 in games at 1080p High). AMD also indicated that the Windows 11 24H2 code improvements will see some improvement on Zen 4 and Zen 3 processors, though not as much as on Zen 5.
AMD says that running benchmarks in 'Admin' mode enables some of the branch prediction improvements, leading to better performance.
AMD is 'collaborating with Microsoft' to try and get them to push out the code improvements in a regular update instead of waiting until whenever Microsoft finally ships Windows 11 24H2.
Yeah Hardware Unboxed did some tests with admin mode and saw some improvements, Cyberpunk 2077 was 7% faster in admin mode on the 9700X.. but the 7700X was 8% faster. Their conclusion was that while yes you get improvements, you get mostly the same improvements on Zen 4 for most games. They had Zen 5 3% faster in their 13 game average than Zen 4, and in admin mode it's now.... 4% faster.
Which still amounts to Zen 5 being a pretty big flop for anything but people interested in all core workloads.
But maybe there's additional Zen 5 improvements in 24H2.
I'll wait for the 3D cache one reviews and see, it should be a very nice uplift over my 5900X.
__________________ Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position.
But certainty is an absurd one.
. September then. Okay, so plan the new build and grab a 5090 a few months after that to do it all at once.
