Question DEGRADING Raptor lake CPUs

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Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
1,063
1,120
136
I noticed some reports about degrading i9 13900K and KF processors.

I experienced this problem myself, when I ran it at 6 GHz, light load (3 threads of Cinebench), at acceptable temperature and non extreme voltage. After only few minutes it crashed, and then it could not run even at stock setting without bumping the voltage a bit.

I was thinking about the cause for this and I believe the problem is, that people do not appreciate, how high these frequencies are and that the real comfortable frequency limit of these CPUs is probably at something like 5500 or 5600 MHz. These CPUs are made on a same process (possibly improved somehow) on which Alder lake CPUs were made. See the frequencies 12900KS runs at. The frequency improvement of the new process tweak may not be so high as some people presume.

Those 13900K CPUs are probably highly binned to be able to find those which contain some cores which can reliably run at 5800 MHz. Some of the 13900K probably have little/no OC reserve left and pushing them will cause them to degrade/break.

The conclusion for me is that the best you can do to your 13900K or 13900KF is to disable the 5800 MHz peak, which will allow you to offset the voltage lower, and then set all core maximal frequency to some comfortable level, I guess the maximum level could be 5600 MHz. With lowered voltage this frequency should be gentler to the processor than running it at original 5500 MHz at higher voltage. You can also run it at lower frequencies, allowing for even higher voltage drop, but then the CPU is slowly loosing its sense (unless you want some high efficiency CPU intended for heavy multithread loads).

Running it with some power consumption limit dependent on your cooling solution to keep the CPU at sensible temperature will help too for sure.
 
Last edited:

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
26,054
15,195
136
In the meantime:

BOYCOTT INTEL! Do not buy ANY of their current or future CPU products until they make this right.
SUE! People who own Raptor Lake-S, HX, and -R are entitled to remuneration.
I have since 2017. And I argued even before Alder lake that their CPU was drawing too much power (9900k ?? Fall 2018 ?)
 
Reactions: Ranulf

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
29,462
24,160
146
GN and HUB have a do not buy on 13&14 until further notice. Seems like GN will not be satisfied with testing the patch, and is on board with a boycott until Intel resolves this satisfactorily. Steve, initially was keeping it tentative to the patch, but this latest statement has him full nope.
 

Hulk

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,455
2,373
136
In the meantime:

BOYCOTT INTEL! Do not buy ANY of their current or future CPU products until they make this right.
SUE! People who own Raptor Lake-S, HX, and -R are entitled to remuneration.
Hmm. I have a 14900K as you all know. What was I expecting based on the specifications?

5.6GHz all-core if I can keep temps under 100C (Intel ARK w/o thermal velocity boost)? Maybe with a very high quality custom loop, but at what volts/longevity?

Honestly I don't think most 14900K's can do that spec long term without sub ambient cooling.

6GHz single core as specified by ARK requires insane volts on all but golden samples.

I'm running 5.5GHz all-core, no HT, 1.3 max voltage. What am I missing? Perhaps 100MHz and HT? What's it worth? I don't know.

Intel over specified these parts. I think that is clear. There are two outcomes as I see it.
1. If your CPU degraded and failed you are owed your purchase price back.
2. If you ran your CPU at sane volts but lower performance like me should you expect some compensation? I had quite a bit of experience with Raptor Lake and knew what I was buying and I also knew it wouldn't run at Intel specs without sub ambient cooling and/or lots of CPU killing voltage. Assuming my CPU holds up through the warranty period Intel doesn't owe me anything.

Intel only has to guarantee base frequency, right? Anything else is opportunistic based on a great motherboard and cooling. Just playing devil's advocate here.
 

Thunder 57

Platinum Member
Aug 19, 2007
2,952
4,476
136
Hmm. I have a 14900K as you all know. What was I expecting based on the specifications?

5.6GHz all-core if I can keep temps under 100C (Intel ARK w/o thermal velocity boost)? Maybe with a very high quality custom loop, but at what volts/longevity?

Honestly I don't think most 14900K's can do that spec long term without sub ambient cooling.

6GHz single core as specified by ARK requires insane volts on all but golden samples.

I'm running 5.5GHz all-core, no HT, 1.3 max voltage. What am I missing? Perhaps 100MHz and HT? What's it worth? I don't know.

Intel over specified these parts. I think that is clear. There are two outcomes as I see it.
1. If your CPU degraded and failed you are owed your purchase price back.
2. If you ran your CPU at sane volts but lower performance like me should you expect some compensation? I had quite a bit of experience with Raptor Lake and knew what I was buying and I also knew it wouldn't run at Intel specs without sub ambient cooling and/or lots of CPU killing voltage. Assuming my CPU holds up through the warranty period Intel doesn't owe me anything.

Intel only has to guarantee base frequency, right? Anything else is opportunistic based on a great motherboard and cooling. Just playing devil's advocate here.

That sounds like some Stockholm syndrome right there. Maybe reviewers should only benchmark CPU's at base frequency then? Devil's advocate indeed.
 
Jul 27, 2020
19,613
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146
Intel only has to guarantee base frequency, right? Anything else is opportunistic based on a great motherboard and cooling. Just playing devil's advocate here.
But there are plenty of Ryzens running with PBO and CO and we don't hear reports of users having to disable those due to the CPU not being able to sustain those settings and that level of performance after a certain period of time. So relatively speaking, Intel owes the maximum the particular CPU sample is able to offer, without degradation. That's just how the x86 market is right now. Would be different if there were multiple players and some of them made CPUs that could barely offer stock performance while CPUs from some other makers were like lottery tickets in terms of quality and frequency. In that market, the barely stock ones would fetch the lowest price and the lottery ones would be harder to keep in stock due to higher demand and thus they would be priced high.

What Intel has done with 13/14th gen is that they tried to compete really hard, apparently failed in that attempt, not willing to sell those CPUs at a much lower price for the problems they are exhibiting and worse, they have denied RMAs and pretended to be like Nvidia, telling users to contact their system integrators or mobo manufacturers. If they want to guarantee stable operation with base frequency ONLY, they should price their CPUs accordingly.
 
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naukkis

Senior member
Jun 5, 2002
871
737
136
Intel has specs for ST boost frequencies that cpus will achieve. They have a massive problem if those freqs cannot achieved within voltages that silicon can survive. Basically they have to recall non-working cpus. And they pretty much can't do it until they at least have something to offer for replacement - trading Raptor lakes for AMD cpu/MB is probably too costly and bad for reputation
 

KompuKare

Golden Member
Jul 28, 2009
1,163
1,426
136
What Intel has done with 13/14th gen is that they tried to compete really hard, apparently failed in that attempt, not willing to sell those CPUs at a much lower price for the problems they are exhibiting and worse, they have denied RMAs and pretended to be like Nvidia, telling users to contact their system integrators or mobo manufacturers. If they want to guarantee stable operation with base frequency ONLY, they should price their CPUs accordingly.
Yes, pushing these CPUs too hard because otherwise they're design cannot compete was always a stupid thing to do.

Brute-forcing silicon really is asking for trouble.

I am just glad that after this nobody sane will try that approach again - at least for a few years anyways.
Base clocks are guaranteed for rated TDP, but Intel also has to guarantee the CPU can safely hit advertised boost clocks. There's no going around this.
Yes, only base would be crazy especially since all reviews included boost. Like Igor said, without this boost and at sane power all these Intel CPUs would have benched far worse and would have commanded a far lower price.

Any attempts to now only guarantee base clocks would be pure bait and switch.
 
Reactions: igor_kavinski
Jul 27, 2020
19,613
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Base clocks are guaranteed for rated TDP, but Intel also has to guarantee the CPU can safely hit advertised boost clocks. There's no going around this.
I have a solution for that!

Intel buys Asetek, Intel develops their futuristic cooling solution that maintains freezing temps without any condensation issues and Intel only guarantees stable operation for their K CPUs if the customer ALSO buys their cooling solution too. Or they develop their submersion cooling tank that can be filled with a non-corrosive and non-sticky watery coolant to ensure the heat is dissipated as best as possible. Intel users will buy that. Even now many Intel users spend far more on cooling than they would have to for competing and better performing Ryzens. So at least Intel can bank on that fact.

As for non-K CPUs, Intel needs to remove boost clock from those and make them run like pedestrians. That's the best they can do under the current circumstances. At least until their advanced processes after Intel 7 mature and they are able to ramp up the production on those nodes enough to not have to depend on Intel 7 products anymore.

Intel just has to accept this "Bulldozer era" and survive on beans and potato until they can get back to having their yummy steak again.
 
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Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
1,063
1,120
136
I can't think how this would have been worse handled. Intel should provide lifetime warranty for 13/14th gen.
If you were loading them heavilly 24/7, I do not think there is any reasonably high frequency at which the CPUs could survive for a very long period of time, as for 10 or 20 years. Perhaps something like 800 MHz? I think nobody would want such slow CPUs.
 
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Gideon

Golden Member
Nov 27, 2007
1,765
4,114
136
Base clocks are guaranteed for rated TDP, but Intel also has to guarantee the CPU can safely hit advertised boost clocks. There's no going around this.
Well, to play the devils advocate, high-end Ryzen 3xxx also didn't always reach it's adevrtised boost clocks

They would have to be very close though
 
Reactions: lightmanek

Majcric

Golden Member
May 3, 2011
1,388
52
91
I noticed some reports about degrading i9 13900K and KF processors.

I experienced this problem myself, when I ran it at 6 GHz, light load (3 threads of Cinebench), at acceptable temperature and non extreme voltage. After only few minutes it crashed, and then it could not run even at stock setting without bumping the voltage a bit.

I was thinking about the cause for this and I believe the problem is, that people do not appreciate, how high these frequencies are and that the real comfortable frequency limit of these CPUs is probably at something like 5500 or 5600 MHz. These CPUs are made on a same process (possibly improved somehow) on which Alder lake CPUs were made. See the frequencies 12900KS runs at. The frequency improvement of the new process tweak may not be so high as some people presume.

Those 13900K CPUs are probably highly binned to be able to find those which contain some cores which can reliably run at 5800 MHz. Some of the 13900K probably have little/no OC reserve left and pushing them will cause them to degrade/break.

The conclusion for me is that the best you can do to your 13900K or 13900KF is to disable the 5800 MHz peak, which will allow you to offset the voltage lower, and then set all core maximal frequency to some comfortable level, I guess the maximum level could be 5600 MHz. With lowered voltage this frequency should be gentler to the processor than running it at original 5500 MHz at higher voltage. You can also run it at lower frequencies, allowing for even higher voltage drop, but then the CPU is slowly loosing its sense (unless you want some high efficiency CPU intended for heavy multithread loads).

Running it with some power consumption limit dependent on your cooling solution to keep the CPU at sensible temperature will help too for sure.

This pretty much sums up what I was thinking about 13/14 gen being pushed to the extreme. Hence why I bought the 12700k over the 12900k. But aren't there reports of the lower end 13 gen models having issues as well? I suppose its still a bit too early on those and the laptop chips to say for sure.

I don't think AMD is out of the woods yet either running their chips in the 90's and claiming this is safe. Time will tell but both chip manufacturers should tune things back a bit especially for the average consumer, imo.
 
Last edited:

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
26,054
15,195
136
This pretty much sums up what I was thinking about 13/14 gen being pushed to the extreme. Hence why I bought the 12700k over the 12900k. But aren't there reports of the lower end 13 gen models having issues as well? I suppose its still a bit too early on those and the laptop chips to say for sure.

I don't think AMD is out of the woods yet either running their chips in the 90's and claiming this is safe. Time will tell but both chip manufacturers should tune things back a bit especially for the average consumer, imo.
I run my 7950xs, some at the 95c level, othrs as low as 85c. They run 24/7@100% load. This is for like 1.5 years. No problems at all. I don't think AMD has a problem.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,595
13,919
136
Well, to play the devils advocate, high-end Ryzen 3xxx also didn't always reach it's adevrtised boost clocks

They would have to be very close though
There's some wiggle room at the very top due to "terms and conditions". In the case of Intel that would be eTVB which is opportunistic (temps, preferred cores etc.) As you go down 100 or 200Mhz lower... things get complicated fast, the CPU should be able to hit these clocks on multiple cores at once.

This pretty much sums up what I was thinking about 13/14 gen being pushed to the extreme. Hence why I bought the 12700k over the 12900k. But aren't there reports of the lower end 13 gen models having issues as well? I suppose its still a bit too early on those and the laptop chips to say for sure.
There's more to this than clocks and power. There are affected 13th gen CPUs that run lower clocks than the 12700K.
 

Hulk

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,455
2,373
136
Most of the people over at overclockers.net agree that one or two core turbo boost isn't useful from a productivity point of view and the extreme voltage required to make it happen is a CPU killer.

I agree and I believe this type of auto boosting to 6GHz and pumping all of that voltage into the CPU isn't good for the CPU. But Intel had to put those numbers on the box.

My advice to Intel would be to completely rethink their frequency strategy. Simply specify max all-core clocks at some required cooling (max temperature) and let us know what max safe volts are for that condition.

Turbo 1, Turbo 2, Turbo 3, Thermal Velocity Boost, etc.. enough already.

Just tell me this CPU will do 5.6GHz all-core if temps are under x degrees with a max of y volts.
 
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coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,595
13,919
136
I think Intel's RPL microcode eTVB algo tried to boost the preferred cores even when temp was too high so they could appear to come out ahead even on air cooling. Just so dumb.
Up until 2 months ago eTVB and TVB in general was DISABLED on most Intel boards by default. Even if eTVB was buggy almost nobody would have known
 

desrever

Member
Nov 6, 2021
167
445
106
I can't think how this would have been worse handled. Intel should provide lifetime warranty for 13/14th gen.
I think Intel is handling this very well for Intel.

Given the scope of this problem, they been able to distract the entire tech press for a long time, keep their customers from finding out except for the small numbers that follow tech news. There hasn't been any lawsuits and they kept information so minimal and keeping everyone guessing.

At this rate, all they gotta do is lower the damage by limiting the voltage with their new microcode enough so CPU don't fail until after warranty and then they are off scott free.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,998
11,555
136
I think Intel is handling this very well for Intel.

Given the scope of this problem, they been able to distract the entire tech press for a long time, keep their customers from finding out except for the small numbers that follow tech news. There hasn't been any lawsuits and they kept information so minimal and keeping everyone guessing.

At this rate, all they gotta do is lower the damage by limiting the voltage with their new microcode enough so CPU don't fail until after warranty and then they are off scott free.
Nah the tech press is all over this now. It's too late for them to rely on obfuscation and delay tactics.
 
Reactions: KompuKare
Jul 27, 2020
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There hasn't been any lawsuits and they kept information so minimal and keeping everyone guessing.
Maybe lawyers everywhere are waiting for the August microcode update to drop so they have concrete evidence that something was missed by Intel during their regular manufacturing process and they kept denying it and gave their loyal customers the go around instead of properly investigating the issues reported. But then, maybe only Apple has lawyers as powerful as Intel's...
 
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