Intel seems to have released an update regarding its 14th & 13th Gen CPU stability issues, calling out motherboard makers for not following recommended settings.
Intel Says 14th & 13th Gen CPU Stability Issues Are Due To Motherboard & System Makers Not Following Their Recommended Settings
The update comes several months after it was reported that Intel’s 14th & 13th Gen CPUs have a really bad stability problem in several gaming applications. The issue was later discovered to be a problem caused by the CPUs being pushed way too hard from unlimited power limits and thermal profiles.
These settings were usually enabled by default on motherboards and the only way to fix these issues was either to manually tune the whole chip or simply undervolt/underclock it. Either way resulted in performance loss on your chip with up to -15% drops reported in recent tests. The tuning was necessary though as keeping the chip running like that would result in serious silicon degradation, resulting in more issues such as BSODs, failing to open any app, & I/O/DRAM problems too.
Only this week did motherboard makers finally start rolling out fixes to this issue by incorporating a new “Intel BaseLine” BIOS option. This new BIOS is already rolled out by ASUS and Gigabyte while MSI is offering a BIOS Guide to its users to mitigate these stability issues on Intel’s 14th & 13th Gen CPUs. Other motherboard manufacturers will also be following up shortly with their solutions but as we have mentioned above, these profiles result in some serious performance drops, both in multi-threaded apps and games. So if you want better stability, you will end up having to run your chip slower than it was running before.
Most high-end motherboards have the power limits set to “Unlimited” or “4096W/A” modes. The following is a look at the different power limits, motherboard “AUTO” (Not for all motherboards), PL1 and PL2/3/4 limits.
- Motherboard AUTO Profile: 4096W/4096W/Unlimited
- Intel Extreme Config (150W): 320W320W/400A
- Intel Extreme Config (125W): 253W/253W/400A
- Intel Standard Config (150W): 253W/253W/307A
Now Intel has offered a statement of its own which is provided to media outlets but not to the public yet. Following is the full update:
Intel has observed that this issue may be related to out-of-specification operating conditions resulting in sustained high voltage and frequency during periods of elevated heat.
Analysis of affected processors shows some parts experience shifts in minimum operating voltages which may be related to operation outside of Intel specified operating conditions.
- While the root cause has not yet been identified, Intel has observed the majority of reports of this issue are from users with unlocked/overclock capable motherboards.
- Intel has observed 600/700 Series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency, for example:
– Disabling Current Excursion Protection (CEP)
– Enabling the IccMax Unlimited bit
– Disabling Thermal Velocity Boost (TVB) and/or Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB)
– Additional settings which may increase the risk of system instability:
– Disabling C-states
– Using Windows Ultimate Performance mode
– Increasing PL1 and PL2 beyond Intel recommended limitsIntel requests system and motherboard manufacturers to provide end users with a default BIOS profile that matches Intel recommended settings.
- Intel strongly recommends customer’s default BIOS settings should ensure operation within Intel’s recommended settings.
- In addition, Intel strongly recommends motherboard manufacturers to implement warnings for end users alerting them to any unlocked or overclocking feature usage.
Intel is continuing to actively investigate this issue to determine the root cause and will provide additional updates as relevant information becomes available.
Intel will be publishing a public statement regarding issue status and Intel recommended BIOS setting recommendations targeted for May 2024.
Now we kind of knew that this was coming and that the blame would be put on motherboard makers but it should be remembered that Intel had no problem with these unlocked BIOS limits when they were used to boost up the performance for Intel’s 14th & 13th Gen CPUs to make them look good in reviews. Also, the whole point of an unlocked chip is that people pay for it to utilize it for OC and other tuning purposes but if the whole point is to set it to its baseline specifications just to make it run stable, then what’s the point of paying extra?
While we look forward to Intel’s statement which is coming in May 2024, we hope that it isn’t another blame game on the motherboard makers as this issue persisted for two generations of CPUs and Intel didn’t care much about motherboard makers following its “recommended” settings until these issues started popping up.