Intel's 13th and 14th Gen Desktop CPUs Face Persistent Instability Issues

The Issue:

Over the last several months, there have been ongoing problems with instability issues on some desktop 13th and 14th Gen Intel CPUs.This issue was first noticed by the gaming commmunity and the issue was mistook as a issue caused due to overheating during intensive gameplay.The problem escalated to such a point due to the company’s negligence even though the problem has persisted for over one year. The affected processors have resulted in crashes and freezes in games and programs, forcing even game developers to consider AMD-based systems. Last week we saw Alderon Games implementing an in-game warning window to notify users about the cause of the crashes.

Timeline of Events:

• [Dec 2022] The first instances of “Out of Video Memory” issues on 13th Gen Core i9 CPUs were reported back in 2022. (Source: Reddit). This is a few months after the release of Intel’s 13th Gen CPUs & RTX 40 GPUs.
• [Throughout 2023] Several users have started reporting game crashes and issues in high-profile AAA titles such as Callisto Protocol and Hogwarts Legacy (among many others). Both tiles are based on Unreal Engine (released in 2023) and feature a shader compilation process at the start. There are currently thousands of such issues reported on Steam Community Forums and Reddit.
• [February 2024] A post by Sebastian Castellanos brings the issue to the limelight, highlighting the “worrying trend” of stability issues affecting 14th and 13th-gen CPUs.
• [April 2024] NVIDIA Issued a formal statement that the stability issues are not related to its GPUs but rather Intel CPUs.
• [April 2024] Intel announces its investigation of the reports of instability issues affecting 13th and 14th Gen CPUs.
• [April 2024] Motherboard makers quickly roll out “Baseline” power profiles in new BIOS, which lowers power limits on high-end 14th & 13th Gen CPUs but also lead to significant performance drops.
• [May 2024] Intel releases a statement, recommending motherboard makers to ship “Intel Default Settings” in BIOS by default rather than customized settings.
• [June 2024] Intel discovers a bug within its eTVB microcode while investigating the root cause of 14th and 13th Gen Instability issues. This doesn’t fix the instability problems. Board makers quickly roll out BIOS with a new microcode fix.
• [July 2024] Intel denies an RMA to HardwareTimes editor who already RMA’d at least two CPUs which produced instability issues.
• [July 2024] Intel issues a statement confirming that they have found the root cause of the instability issues which happen to be elevated operating voltages and will be issuing a new microcode fix to its partners by mid of August
• [July 2024] Intel confirmed that oxidation issues existed in a previous batch and that there’s no solution for CPUs that are already degraded.
• [August 2024] Law firm initiates a possible class action lawsuit against Intel CPUs facing instability issues.

Intel’s stance:

Here is the recent statement released by Intel (July 2024)

Below is the brief summary of intel’s internal investigation regarding the issue:

” Intel has identified elevated operating voltage as the cause of instability in some 13th/14th Gen desktop processors, resulting from a microcode issue. A microcode patch to address this is expected by mid-August, and users experiencing issues should contact their system vendors or Intel Customer Support for assistance.”

Final Thoughts:

Although Intel is releasing a patch to fix the microcode error that previously caused excess current flow to a single part, it is unlikely to completely solve the entire problem. Therefore, it is better to consider buying processors from other brands instead of these specific models.