Intel 14th and 13th Generation CPU Instability Issues Although the issue has been around for over a year now, Intel has yet to reveal a clear reason for the problem, while other researchers have identified potential causes for silicon degradation and crashing issues associated with these chips.
Intel’s instability issue expands from “software limitations” to possible silicon defects, official response is “we’ll wait”
The crashes, instability and performance issues present in Intel’s 14th and 13th generation CPUs have become unbearable for many consumers, and the community is now determined to switch to alternatives such as AMD’s products.
Here is the timeline of Intel’s 14th and 13th Gen instability issues so far:
- [Dec 2022] The first cases of the “out of video memory” issue on 13th Gen Core i9 CPUs were reported in 2022. (Source: Reddit). This comes just a few months after the release of Intel’s 13th Generation CPUs and RTX 40 GPUs.
- [Throughout 2023] Several users have started reporting game crashes and issues with well-known AAA titles such as: The Callisto Protocol and Hogwarts Legacy (And many more). Both tiles are based on the Unreal Engine (released in 2023) and will have a shader compilation process at launch. There are currently thousands of reports of such issues on the Steam Community forums and Reddit.
- [February 2024] Contributor Sebastian Castellanos It has brought the issue into the spotlight, highlighting a “worrying trend” of stability issues affecting 14th and 13th generation CPUs.
- [February 2024] Our editors and various other technology outlets We started reporting on the issue and getting it covered in the mainstream media, and it was soon pointed out that underclocking and undervolting the chips could potentially improve stability.
- [April 2024] NVIDIA Official statement released The stability issues are said to be related to the Intel CPU and not the GPU.
- [April 2024] Intel present Investigating reports of instability issues affecting 13th and 14th Generation CPUs.
- [April 2024] Motherboard manufacturers are expanding rapidly New BIOS “Baseline” Power ProfileThis lowers the power limits for high-end 14th and 13th Gen CPUs, but also reduces performance significantly.
- [May 2024] Intel releases statementWe recommend motherboard manufacturers to ship the BIOS with “Intel default settings” by default instead of customized settings.
- [June 2024] Intel A bug was found in the eTVB microcode We are investigating the root cause of the instability issue on 14th Gen and 13th Gen. This does not resolve the instability issue. Board manufacturers will release BIOS with new microcode fixes soon.
- [July 2024] Intel Reject the RMA To Hardware Times An editor who has already RMA’d at least two CPUs and is experiencing instability issues.
- [July 2024] Wendell from Level1Techs & Steve Burke of GamersNexus They further highlighted the instability issues on YouTube, and were the first major tech media outlet to delve into details such as OEM complaints and possible recalls.
- [July 2024] GamersNexus Highlights Potential “Oxidation” Defects It occurs on certain batches of Intel 14th and 13th Gen CPUs and can cause instability issues.
- [July 2024] Intel is 14th and 13th generation mobile CPUs are unaffected They suffer from the same instability issues as desktop CPUs.
- to be continued…
The following game studios exist: Alderon Games and Epic Games Other tech content creators who raised this issue on their respective platforms included: Wendell from Level1Techsspreading awareness about this issue amongst viewers.
Despite the issue being widely covered in the mainstream media, Team Blue has been unable to address the root causes, and the company is working with AIB and its board partners to try to mitigate the problem. Found some other bugs, including the eTVB bug But other than that, there was no proper communication from the blue team, which indicates that the company is either worried about a strong backlash from their customer base (clients, partners, OEMs) or wants to drag the issue out as long as possible until something new comes along and people forget about it.
Now, GamersNexus has compiled local statistics on how this issue is affecting Intel 14th and 13th Gen consumers, with one “anonymous” Intel customer saying they’ve seen between 600,000 and 2 million CPUs facing instability issues. This only includes 13th Gen units, with no information currently available on 14th Gen SKUs. Interestingly, one Intel customer revealed that the production dates of the affected units are between March 2023 and April 2024, spanning over 12 months of in-market retail SKUs facing the issue.
From what I’ve heard, 1/3 of all Intel Raptor Lake CPUs shipped are Core i9-13900K or 14900K units, so roughly 40-60 million units (Mike Bruzzone’s estimate). If this is true, Intel could be facing a massive recall, which would be a major disaster for the company and may be one of the reasons why it’s taking so long to respond properly to the community.
Our editors, Hassan reported this in a post on X a while back. He started facing these issues in early 2023, just a few months after the launch of the 14th generation desktop CPUs. The situation has stabilized a bit thanks to BIOS mitigations, but Applying the current “power limiting” fix makes the chip perform less well than it originally did..
What’s even more interesting is that Gamers Nexus Based on internal Intel documents and information from customers, we’ve compiled a list of possible causes for the instability issues: According to the newly revealed information, Team Blue may have faced a “manufacturing” issue with the affected 13th and 14th generation chips, where an “antioxidant” wasn’t applied sufficiently on the SKUs, causing the processor’s electrical connections to fail.
Well, this reasoning makes sense, considering that limiting power levels didn’t solve the problem at all, even though Intel released the relevant microcode. We won’t go into how oxidation affected the CPU’s functionality here (check out the GamersNexus video below for more details), but to summarise, it may have affected individual layers, and therefore the solution doesn’t lie in software-level mitigations.
It is important that the “power limit” issue does not take center stage in this discussion. This is not an “on-board power limit” issue. This is a chip issue, and always has been. The power limit issue has been fixed in microcode. It is not yet known if it will affect Meteor Lake. Processors that may currently be affected are: [about] As far as we know, 8 million units have been shipped.
Disabling Turbo Boost will provide “stability” until the CPU dies due to corrosion/taint. There have been reports of some CPUs being so tainted/corrosive that they won’t even boot without a blue screen.
– Major Intel customer to GN
So, what’s next? According to GamersNexus, vendors are exploring intermediate solutions, with some moving towards limiting clock speeds to 5.3-5.5 GHz at the OEM level, while others are waiting for Intel to come up with a solution. Intel has started working with vendors, hinting at refunds for affected CPUs, and there are also rumors of a possible “major” callback, but nothing is certain as of now.
Additionally, below are the failure rates broken down based on individual Intel SKUs: Interestingly, no heat-related failures were observed, suggesting that the instability issue is likely something more complex.
Failure rates for Intel 7-based Raptor Lake products, JESD94.
All except the 14x01E lineup were tested at 80-85°C, 1.5V, and 100°C, 1.35V.
The rest of the Raptor Lake lineup is built to perfection and is ruggedized to JESD94 standards.
There is no damage caused by heat.
Click to enlarge image. pic.twitter.com/SGeRbp3fbi
— Jaykin (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
Meanwhile, leaker @Jaykihn also said that reports of oxidation being the cause of issues with Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs are unlikely, and that the reports are contradictory as he has stats for Intel 7 (process node) chips tested as of June 2024.
The oxidation claim makes no logical or technical sense.
Occurrences in manufacturing and packaging do not match the claimed timeframes. When such issues occur, shipment is not possible.
The explanation for the cause of oxidation also makes no sense. https://t.co/l2fCHLpVyj
— Jaykin (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
There are too many things I can’t accept.
And then there are the stats for Intel 7 chips tested as of June 2024.
Impossibility aside, even if we take all the claims at face value, there is no significant statistical evidence to back up the claims. In fact, quite the opposite is true.— Jaykin (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
Ian Cutress from More Than Moore also weighed in on the potential reasons behind the issue.
With the rise of high-end CPUs, these units typically require higher mounting pressure or may use boards without mounting plates. They have higher cooling requirements and higher current draw, and shear twist and torque will worsen over time.
— Ian Cutress (@IanCutress) July 15, 2024
Tantalum nitride liner issues. This is a new issue. TaN has a scaled performance/reliability curve, it struggles with scaling issues, and it struggles with copper diffusion into the bulk dielectric.
I might put something together on this over the weekend, thanks to GN for suggesting it as a possibility. https://t.co/rwugtRX8gl pic.twitter.com/eYbhXsrhID
— Ian Cutress (@IanCutress) July 20, 2024
We pushed out Extensive Guidelines You can find out how to resolve the issue based on Intel’s guidance and suggestions from third-party sources here, so if you haven’t implemented the solutions mentioned yet, you can check them out. Additionally, we have spoken to various board partners on this subject and they have told us that they are taking extra care and spending more time testing and evaluating clock and power behaviors, not only for existing chips but also for upcoming CPUs such as Arrow Lake.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see how Team Blue responds to the situation. With Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs on the horizon, this debacle is getting both interesting and disappointing at the same time.
