For months, Intel's high-end desktop gaming processors have had a strange tendency to occasionally cause games to crash, and despite what you may have seen today, Intel says it doesn't have a final fix for its Intel Core i9 13th and 14th generation. “Raptor Lake” and “Raptor Lake S” chips for the moment.
“Contrary to recent media reports, Intel has No confirmed the root cause and continues, with its partners, to investigate user reports of instability issues on unlocked 13th and 14th Generation Intel Core (K/KF/KS) desktop processors,” reads a statement through Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford.
It continues: “The microcode patch referenced in the press reports fixes an eTVB bug discovered by Intel while investigating reports of instability. “While this issue may contribute to instability, it is not the root cause.”
Intel's official statement refers to (and partially confirms) Leaked internal Intel documents obtained by Igor's laboratory the present day. Those documents suggest that part of the problem is how Intel chips have been mistakenly overclocking their own cores, using a feature called Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB), even when they should have known they were running too hard to do so.
“The root cause is an incorrect value in a microcode algorithm associated with the eTVB function,” that leaked document began. He continued:
Failure analysis (FA) of the 13th and 14th generation SKU K processors indicates a change in the minimum operating voltage on the affected processors as a result of cumulative exposure to elevated core voltages. Intel® analysis has determined that a confirmed contributing factor to this issue is high voltage input to the processor due to previous BIOS settings that allow the processor to operate at turbo frequencies and voltages even when the processor is at a high temperature. . Previous generations of Intel® K SKU processors were less sensitive to these types of configurations due to a lower default operating voltage and frequency.
Intel® requests all customers update the BIOS to microcode 0x125 or later by 07/19/2024.
This microcode includes an eTVB fix for an issue that may allow the processor to enter a higher performance state even when the processor temperature has exceeded eTVB thresholds..
But while Intel confirms that eTVB was potentially part of the problem, it is apparently not the “root cause” of the entire problem.
We hope to get a complete solution soon.
