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July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

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Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#121

Post by RedShift1 »

phire wrote: post #100

I find it hard to believe that it actually is a microcode issue. Mostly because Intel has way too much motivation to pass it off as a microcode issue, as they can fix a microcode issue for free, by pushing out a patch. If it's an actual hardware issue, then Intel will be forced to actually recall all the faulty CPUs, which could cost them billions. The other reason, is that it took them way too long to give details.…

As I understand it, there are multiple voltages inside the CPU, so just monitoring the motherboard VRM won't cut it.

That said I too am very skeptical. I just issued a moratorium on the purchase of anything Intel 13th/14th gen in our company and waiting for some actual proof that the issue is fully resolved.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#122

Post by Dylan16807 »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #114
Dylan16807 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they didn't notice it for a good while, so it's really hard to say how much impact it had. And at a certain point if you barely believe anything they say, then you shouldn't be using their statement to get mad about. The complaint you're making depends on very particular parts of their statement being true but other very particular parts being not true. I don't think we have the evidence to do that right now.

> Well they didn't notice it for a good while, so it's really hard to say how much impact it had. That negates any arguments you had related to failure rates. > The complaint you're making depends on very particular parts of their statement being true but other very particular parts being not true Er, I’m not even sure how to respond to this. GamersNexus has indicated they know about the oxidisation issue, intel *sub…

> That negates any arguments you had related to failure rates.

I mean it's hard for us to say, without sufficient data. But Intel might have that much data.

Also what argument about failure rates? The one where I said "if" about failure rates?

> Er, I’m not even sure how to respond to this. GamersNexus has indicated they know about the oxidisation issue, intel subsequently confirm it was known internally but no public statement was made until now.

GamersNexus thinks the oxidation might be the cause of the instability everyone is having. Intel claims otherwise.

Intel has no reason to lie about this detail. It doesn't matter if the issue is oxidation versus something else.

Also the issue Intel admits to can't be the problem with 14th gen, because it only happened to 13th gen chips.

> Intel has known about these issues for some time and said nothing. Nothing they say now can be trusted unless it involves them admitting fault.

If you don't trust what Intel said today at all, then you can't make good claims about what they knew or didn't know. You're picking and choosing what you believe to an extent I can't support.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#123

Post by Dunati »

thangngoc89 wrote: post #105
whalesalad wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you using any motherboard overclocking stuff? A lot of mobo’s are pushing these chips pretty hard right out of the box. I have mine at a factory setting that Intel would suggest, not the asus multi core enhancement crap. noctua dh15 cooler. It’s really been a stable setup.

I didn’t setup anything in BIOS. But my motherboard are from asus. I will look into this. Thanks for your suggestion.

My 13900k has definitely degraded over time. I was running bus defaults for everything and the pc was fine for several months. When I started getting crashes it took me a long time to diagnose it as a CPU problem. Changing the mobo vdroop setting made the problem go away for a while, but it came back. I then got it stable again by dropping the core multipliers down to 54x, but then a couple months later I had to drop to 53x. I just got an rma replacement and it had made it 12 hours without issue.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#124

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

fomine3 wrote: post #68
giantg2 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently looking at building and buying a couple systems. I've always liked Intel. I went AMD this time. It seemed like the base frequencies vs boost frequencies were much farther apart on Intel than with most of the AMDs. This was especially true on the laptops were cooling is a larger concern. So I suspect they were pushing limits. Also, the performance core vs efficiency core stuff seemed kind of gimmicky wi…

More E-core is reasonable for multi threaded application performance. It's efficient for power and die area as the name indicates, so they can implement more E-cores than P-cores for the same power/area budget. It's not suitable for who need many single threaded performance cores like VM server, but I don't know is there any major consumer usage requires such performance.

> but I don't know is there any major consumer usage requires such performance.

Gaming.

There are some games that will benefit from greater single-core performance.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#125

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #94
Dylan16807 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like look at this 20 core processor! Oh wait, it's really an 8 core when it comes to performance. The E cores are about half as fast as the P cores depending on use case, at about 30% of the size. If you have a program that can use more than 8 cores, then that 8P+12E CPU should approach a 14P CPU in speed. (And if it can't use more than 8 cores then P versus E doesn't matter.) (Or if you meant 4P+16E then I don't t…

> If you have a program that can use more than 8 cores, then that 8P+12E CPU should approach a 14P CPU in speed Only if you use work stealing queues or (this is ridiculously unlikely) run multithreaded algorithms that are aware of the different performance and split the work unevenly to compensate.

> run multithreaded algorithms that are aware of the different performance and split the work unevenly to compensate.

This is what the Intel Thread Director [0] solves.

For high-intensity workloads, it will prioritize assigning them to P-cores.

[0] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#126

Post by tibbydudeza »

HeliumHydride wrote: post #61

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/theslowwinte... "Unfortunately for John, the branches made a pact with Satan and quantum mechanics [...] In exchange for their last remaining bits of entropy, the branches cast evil spells on future genera- tions of processors. Those evil spells had names like “scaling- induced voltage leaks” and “increasing levels of waste heat” [...] the branches, those vanquished foe…

Thanks - it is rather funny.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#127

Post by sirn »

magicalhippo wrote: post #59
tedunangst wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mobile issue seems more anecdote than data? Almost as if people on Reddit heard the 13/14 CPUs were bad, then their laptop crashed, and they decided "it happened to me too".

Well it's not just[1] redditors from what I can gather: Now Alderon Games reports that Raptor Lake crashes impact Intel's 13th and 14th-Gen processors in laptops as well. "Yes we have several laptops that have failed with the same crashes. It's just slightly more rare then the desktop CPU faults," the dev posted. These are the guys who publicly claimed[2] Intel sold defective chips based on the desktop chips crashing…

The problem may exist, but Alderon Games' report on the mobile chip is more of an anecdote here because there's not enough data points (unlike their desktop claims), and the only SKU they give (13900HX) is actually a desktop chip in a mobile package (BGA instead of LGA, so we're back into the original issue). So in the end, even with Alderon's claims, there's really not enough data points to come to a conclusion on the mobile side of things.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#128

Post by Dylan16807 »

giantg2 wrote: post #112
Dylan16807 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like look at this 20 core processor! Oh wait, it's really an 8 core when it comes to performance. The E cores are about half as fast as the P cores depending on use case, at about 30% of the size. If you have a program that can use more than 8 cores, then that 8P+12E CPU should approach a 14P CPU in speed. (And if it can't use more than 8 cores then P versus E doesn't matter.) (Or if you meant 4P+16E then I don't t…

Yeah, the 20 core Intels are benchmarking about the same as the 12 core AMD X3Ds. But many people just see 20>12. Either one is more than fine for most people. "Oh wait, it's really an 8 core when it comes to performance [cores]". So yes, should not be an 8 core all together, but like you said about 14 cores, or 12 with the 3D cache. "And I doubt those cores have a higher clock." I'm not sure what we're comparing the…

> I'm not sure what we're comparing them to. They should be capable of higher clock than the E cores.

Oh, just higher clocked than the E cores. Yeah that's true, but if you're using that many cores at once you probably only care about total speed.

You said 12 core with higher clock versus 8, so I thought you were comparing to the performance cores.

> I thought all the AMD cores had the ability to hit the max frequency (but not necessarily at the same time).

The cores under the 3D cache have a notable clock penalty on existing CPUs.

> And some of the cores might not be able to take advantage of the 3D cache, but that doesn't limit their frequency, from my understanding.

Right, but my point is it's misleading to call out higher core count and the advantages of 3D stacking. The 3D stacking mostly benefits the cores it's on top of, which is 6-8 of them on existing CPUs.

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#129

Post by sirn »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #71

"Elevated operating voltage" my foot. We've already seen examples of this happening on non-OC'd server-style motherboards that perfectly adhere to the intel spec. This isn't like ASUS going 'hur dur 20% more voltage' and frying chips. If that's all it was it would be obvious. Lowering voltage may help mitigate the problem, but it sure as shit isn't the cause.

It's worth noting that W680 boards are not a server board, they're a workstation board, and often times they're overclockable (or even overclocked by default). Wendell actually showed the other day that the ASUS W680 board was feeding 253W into a 35W (106W boost) 13700T CPU by default[1].

Supermicro and ASRock Rack do sell W680 as a server (because it took Intel a really long time to release C266), but while they're strictly to the spec, some boards are really not meant for K CPUs. For example, the Supermicro MBI-311A-1T2N is only certified for a non-TVB E/T CPUs, and trying to run the K CPU on these can result in the board plumbing 1.55V into the CPU during the single core load (where 1.4V would already be on the higher side)[2].

In this particular case, the "non-OC'd server-style motherboard" doesn't really mean anything (even more so in the context of this announcement).

[1]: https://x.com/tekwendell/status/1814329015773086069

[2]: https://x.com/Buildzoid1/status/1814520745810100666

Re: July 2024 Update on Instability Reports on Intel Core 13th/14th Gen Desktop CPUs

#130

Post by phire »

RedShift1 wrote: post #121
phire wrote: post #100

I find it hard to believe that it actually is a microcode issue. Mostly because Intel has way too much motivation to pass it off as a microcode issue, as they can fix a microcode issue for free, by pushing out a patch. If it's an actual hardware issue, then Intel will be forced to actually recall all the faulty CPUs, which could cost them billions. The other reason, is that it took them way too long to give details.…

As I understand it, there are multiple voltages inside the CPU, so just monitoring the motherboard VRM won't cut it. That said I too am very skeptical. I just issued a moratorium on the purchase of anything Intel 13th/14th gen in our company and waiting for some actual proof that the issue is fully resolved.

It's complicated.

On Raptor lake, there are a few integrated voltage regulators to which provide new voltages for specialised uses (like the E core's L2 cache, parts of DDR memory IO, PCI-E IO), but the current draw on those regulators is pretty low. The bulk of the power comes directly from motherboard VRMs on one of several rails with no internal regulation. Most of the power draw is grouped onto just two rails, VccGT for the GPU, and VccCore (also known as VccIA in other generations) which powers all the P-cores, all the E-cores and, the ring bus and the last-level cache.

Which means all cores share the same voltage, and it's trivial to monitor externally.

I guess it's possible the bug could be with only of the integrated voltage regulators, but those seem to only power various IO devices, and I struggle to see how they could trigger this type of instability.

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