Intel breaks silence on 13th and 14th-gen Raptor Lake desktop CPU instability issues

Emperor said:
Intel Corp. is planning to cut thousands of jobs to save money and invest in improving its technology after facing declining profits and losing market share, according to a report by Bloomberg. These job cuts may be announced soon, and Intel, which has around 1,10,000 employees, will report its second-quarter earnings on Thursday. link here

Intel is laying off thousands of employees to recover from financial losses and adapt to market changes, driven by a significant drop in their stock price and challenges in meeting AI chip demand. link here

Once upon a time in India ... mobile means Nokia and Computer means Intel.

Is Intel going on Nokia way?

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Probably they are running out of pcs in their offices because all the 13th and 14th gen processors they installed...melted
 
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my 12900k (canadian) is dead and i got a response for RMA almost 40 days later. i wonder what 14 gen owners will go through if they decide to get a replacement
 
meduvada said:
my 12900k (canadian) is dead and i got a response for RMA almost 40 days later. i wonder what 14 gen owners will go through if they decide to get a replacement
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it's really pity to see that Intel still didn't improve in RMA, 15-16 yrs. back, they replace a year old board (with 3 yrs. warranty) with old/used/heavy scratched board and that too with No I/O Plate for that replaced board. When I asked for I/O plate they bluntly refused to provide any ( somewhere in Chennai/Bangalore base service Center) and that forced me to sell a year old Intel system at loss.

From then never trust on Intel warranty but on sellers warranty, also good that Intel Stop producing boards.
 
https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1ehv0v8

Official post by Intel employee, they're planning to extend warranty by 2 years. 2 probably isn't enough, but it is something at least.
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Have been running hwinfo64 for a day now, max core VID (voltage requested by the CPU) is 1.415v, max reported by the motherboard Vcore sensor is 1.385v. This is assuring as while these sensors won't catch the transients, it is unlikely to go up by 100mv+ from the requested values. The Asus bios also lists out the V/F points, and my CPU can reach rated 5.4Ghz with 1.384v, not great, not terrible (fingers crossed).
 
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ze_cook said:
Official post by Intel employee, they're planning to extend warranty by 2 years. 2 probably isn't enough, but it is something at least.
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Yes, although in addition to that, I wish they would have given a way to identify the CPUs impacted by the oxidation issue and replaced them.
 
I'd say don't apply the patch, wait for your CPU to shows signs of instability and RMA it.

Intel is deliberately withholding the batch numbers of the affected CPUs in hopes that applying the patch might hide partial degradation and make it last just beyond than the total 5 year warranty. Every defective CPU they don't replace is extra profit for them
 
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n1r0 said:
I'd say don't apply the patch, wait for your CPU to shows signs of instability and RMA it.

Intel is deliberately withholding the batch numbers of the affected CPUs in hopes that applying the patch might hide partial degradation and make it last just beyond than the total 5 year warranty. Every defective CPU they don't replace is extra profit for them
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Yes but we will have to wait and see the terms of extended warranty. They may force application of the microcode patch without which they will not entertain.
 
ibose said:
They may force application of the microcode patch without which they will not entertain.
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If am not mistaken, Intel's provided microcode will exist as part of operating system, so how will they come to know whether microcode is applied or not ?
Also, how can one avoid applying microcode if it's provided through Windows updates, etc. ?
 
ibose said:
They may force application of the microcode patch without which they will not entertain.
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An overnight Cinebench loop with old BIOS should destroy any CPU. I guess everyone should have at least a year of the original 3 year warranty left.

The core issue is Intel hiding the fact who might be affected, and who will end up with a nerfed CPU/reduced usable life. In that case, it's better to RMA and get a new CPU altogether. Which is what they should have done.
 
ibose said:
First search result itself -
www.intel.com

How to Find the Microcode Version Currently Running on your Processor

Give instructions for using the Intel® Processor Identification Utility to determine the microcode version currently running on your processor.
www.intel.com www.intel.com
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This info made me search a bit more, looks like they push it through BIOS, Windows OS patches, etc.

www.intel.com

Microcode Update Guidance

Details, instructions, and debugging information for system administrators applying microcode updates to Intel® processors
www.intel.com www.intel.com

Still doubts exists whether this is temporary or permanent on CPU. As of now, my understanding is that it's temporary.
 
n1r0 said:
An overnight Cinebench loop with old BIOS should destroy any CPU. I guess everyone should have at least a year of the original 3 year warranty left.

The core issue is Intel hiding the fact who might be affected, and who will end up with a nerfed CPU/reduced usable life. In that case, it's better to RMA and get a new CPU altogether. Which is what they should have done.
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In my understanding, if your CPU is not degraded, an all core load will not accelerate the process, as all core loads typically see lower voltages (stock config, all core boosts are lower due to higher current requirement and thermal limit).

It's only when the CPU is boosting one particular core(or lightly threaded) to achieve the highest clocks, and has the thermal headroom to achieve that, degradation can occur due to higher voltages.
 
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Cinebench does single core benchmarks as well, I should have specified that, thanks.

If you set the affinity, you can select which core you want to run the stress test on.

Looking forward to Gamer Nexus' take on this. I'm sure someone will write an app to do this automatically. I mean this is what we were trying to avoid when OCing manually.
 
n1r0 said:
An overnight Cinebench loop with old BIOS should destroy any CPU. I guess everyone should have at least a year of the original 3 year warranty left.

The core issue is Intel hiding the fact who might be affected, and who will end up with a nerfed CPU/reduced usable life. In that case, it's better to RMA and get a new CPU altogether. Which is what they should have done.
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I don't think they are that stupid and this extended warranty is more of a saving grace than anything. Let's wait for the extended warranty terms to become clear.
Someone needs to look at the existing warranty terms as well if what you are saying is even covered. Folks would not want to be left with a lemon without any option for replacement. If you are looking to do that, please do share your RMA experience here.
TEUser2K1 said:
Still doubts exists whether this is temporary or permanent on CPU. As of now, my understanding is that it's temporary.
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If by temporary you mean, can they overwrite the previous with a new one, then yes, of course. They do that all the time.
 
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Overclocking has always voided warranty, no need for separate terms under extended warranty.

A safe OC cannot be detected outside the mobo it was OCd on.

PS: I'm not actually directing anyone to kill their CPUs. Just pointing out that Intel can't tell when the degradation occurred, only if it occurred or not. Let's wait and see how things unroll

Edit: IIRC simply activating XMP voids CPU warranty.
 
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Emperor said:
it's really pity to see that Intel still didn't improve in RMA, 15-16 yrs. back, they replace a year old board (with 3 yrs. warranty) with old/used/heavy scratched board and that too with No I/O Plate for that replaced board. When I asked for I/O plate they bluntly refused to provide any ( somewhere in Chennai/Bangalore base service Center) and that forced me to sell a year old Intel system at loss.

From then never trust on Intel warranty but on sellers warranty, also good that Intel Stop producing boards.
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i had similar experience with skulltrail motherboard. buggy and unstable af, died within a month, when asked for replacement they issued an old board which didn't even boot
 
ibose said:
If by temporary you mean, can they overwrite the previous with a new one, then yes, of course. They do that all the time.
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Ah, my idea was microcode (or it's version number) does not exist physically on cpu, but in BIOS or OS.
It's loaded during boot time, CPU forgets the whole thing once system is shut down.

For those who are keen on RMA !!!
"Intel has denied two of my 14900K RMAs (instability) and stated they will confiscate or destroy them if I proceed with the warranty process."
:(
 
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That Reddit story is downright horrible. Intel is making retailers to pay for their mistakes? I am interested to know what microcenter store guys will say when one goes to store and say ‘I want to buy Intel PC’.
 
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