Intel says its Raptor Lake crashing chip nightmare is over

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Intel whitethorn person 1 little interest connected its precise afloat plate: it believes it has present afloat addressed its desktop CPU instability woes with 13th and 14th Gen “Raptor Lake” chips.

While the institution says there’s still nary fix for processors that are already damaged, it confirms to maine that the “Vmin Shift Instability” is the root origin of the antithetic instability and crashes that these desktop CPUs person been demonstrating for galore months.

And, Intel says, the 4 sets of mitigations it’s present shipped are the fix for the problem.

“Yes, we’re confirming this is the cause and that it is fixed,” Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford tells The Verge.

That’s good! It besides wasn’t wide until now. As of August 30th, Intel was inactive telling america that “Vmin Shift Instability” was not necessarily the basal origin oregon the lone origin of the antithetic crashes we’ve seen with 13th and 14th Gen chips. So past Wednesday, erstwhile Intel announced it had diagnosed the basal origin of Vmin Shift Instability, it was not wide whether it had diagnosed wherefore these chips were failing, period, oregon conscionable 1 imaginable cause.

I spent a week going backmost and distant with Intel astir this, and the institution initially provided answers that didn’t rather deed the people — but it’s present consenting to accidental that Vmin Shift Stability is the basal cause.

So: what is VMin Shift Instability? The abbreviated mentation is that Intel’s chips and their paired motherboards were asking for excessively overmuch voltage, and that voltage was damaging parts of these chips, prematurely aging them.

Here’s a somewhat longer version, from Intel’s nationalist blog post:

Vmin Shift Instability Root Cause

Intel® has localized the Vmin Shift Instability contented to a timepiece histrion circuit wrong the IA halfway which is peculiarly susceptible to reliability aging nether elevated voltage and temperature. Intel has observed these conditions tin pb to a work rhythm displacement of the clocks and observed strategy instability.

Intel® has identified 4 (4) operating scenarios that tin pb to Vmin displacement successful affected processors:

1) Motherboard powerfulness transportation settings exceeding Intel powerfulness guidance.

a. Mitigation: Intel® Default Settings recommendations for Intel® Core™ 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors.

2) eTVB Microcode algorithm which was allowing Intel® Core™ 13th and 14th Gen i9 desktop processors to run astatine higher show states adjacent astatine precocious temperatures.

a. Mitigation: microcode 0x125 (June 2024) addresses eTVB algorithm issue.

3) Microcode SVID algorithm requesting precocious voltages astatine a frequence and duration which tin origin Vmin shift.

a. Mitigation: microcode 0x129 (August 2024) addresses precocious voltages requested by the processor.

4) Microcode and BIOS codification requesting elevated halfway voltages which tin origin Vmin displacement particularly during periods of idle and/or airy activity.

a. Mitigation: Intel® is releasing microcode 0x12B, which encompasses 0x125 and 0x129 microcode updates, and addresses elevated voltage requests by the processor during idle and/or airy enactment periods.

If you download the latest BIOS updates for your motherboard, which should already beryllium rolling out, Intel believes they should support your spot from prematurely aging. But if you’re already experiencing signs of premature aging, you should instrumentality the spot nether warranty ASAP. Intel present has a two-year warranty hold connected these chips, and almost each PC shaper has committed to honoring it.

“To beryllium clear, The BIOS and microcode updates volition not hole processors that already are experiencing instability from Vmin shift,” writes Intel spokesperson Mark Anthony Ramirez. “Customers experiencing instability symptoms connected 13th and 14th Generation desktop processors should interaction their Intel representative, strategy manufacturer, oregon spot of purchase.”

Intel is inactive not publically providing the batch numbers oregon serial fig ranges of Raptor Lake chips that suffered from oxidization during manufacturing — it claims it fixed that contented agelong agone — and it does not person an update connected a instrumentality to fto you easy trial your spot to spot if it’s aged prematurely. Intel is besides inactive not providing an estimation of however galore chips are apt to beryllium irreversibly impacted, oregon however lenient it volition beryllium with warranty support.

The institution claims its laptop chips, and each aboriginal desktop chips, are not affected by this issue.

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