Question DEGRADING Raptor lake CPUs

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Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
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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.
 
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Saylick

Diamond Member
Sep 10, 2012
3,503
7,764
136
MLID has Matt from Alderon Games as the guest today. Should be an interesting listen. Hopefully Matt gets into the nitty gritty details of how everything went down.
I was listening to that while I was driving to work. The gist I got from Matt at Alderon was that when they said "100% of RPL processors were failing", they defined failure as anything that would cause performance degradation or downtime. That could mean clock degradation, system instabilities, or having to loosen RAM timings. This makes sense from their POV where they have servers being used in a production environment where maintaining very high uptime is key. From a timeline perspective, they apparently started noticing issues in late 2022, which was early on in RPL's lifespan. Regarding why they didn't just come out with this news earlier since late 2022 is more than a year ago, they mentioned that many companies who work with Intel don't want to sour that relationship for fear of losing support in the future, not getting their RMAs approved, etc.
 

moinmoin

Diamond Member
Jun 1, 2017
5,063
8,025
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Regarding why they didn't just come out with this news earlier since late 2022 is more than a year ago, they mentioned that many companies who work with Intel don't want to sour that relationship for fear of losing support in the future, not getting their RMAs approved, etc.
Which conversely means companies are starting to stop caring about this. This way Intel should finally start losing their leverage they had over much of the industry over the years. For a competitive level playing field this is great overdue development. For an Intel that is apparently up to this day strongly reliant on such leverage this could well mean the death knell that sounds the end of the kind of business Intel is so used to doing.
 

DAPUNISHER

Super Moderator CPU Forum Mod and Elite Member
Super Moderator
Aug 22, 2001
29,442
24,096
146
The IBM style institutional rot happens from the inside, and by the time you see it, the whole structure is collapsing.

I have seen posts from a couple of their engineers. Uncompetitive pay that was made up for through bonuses and perks. They cut the Sabbatical time and retirement contributions in half, no bonuses because of missed goals, the fruit and drinks gone, etc. Says starting pay is only 65K-85K. As surmised many are searching for happier hunting grounds. Death by a 1000 cuts in progress. The defective CPUs may be more of a nicked artery though.
 

bononos

Diamond Member
Aug 21, 2011
3,909
171
106
I was listening to that while I was driving to work. The gist I got from Matt at Alderon was that when they said "100% of RPL processors were failing", they defined failure as anything that would cause performance degradation or downtime. That could mean clock degradation, system instabilities, or having to loosen RAM timings. This makes sense from their POV where they have servers being used in a production environment where maintaining very high uptime is key. From a timeline perspective, they apparently started noticing issues in late 2022, which was early on in RPL's lifespan. Regarding why they didn't just come out with this news earlier since late 2022 is more than a year ago, they mentioned that many companies who work with Intel don't want to sour that relationship for fear of losing support in the future, not getting their RMAs approved, etc.
He said he lost several hundred thousand dollars, not including the cost of some hardware parts. He got irritated when Intel didn't approve his RMAs and said his server provider (and I think other server companies) also didn't get their RMAs approved. After releasing his company statement about the sorry state of 14th gen, he said he got ddos'd by Intel fans. Other reasons for companies keeping quiet is confidentiality in the contracts and not jeopardising future discounts for bulk purchasing. link

If Intel is -redacted- over their corporate clients, I think the lowly end users are definitely going to have a tough time with RMAs as well.
Taking away the complimentary fruit baskets really showed how low Intel has sunk. What can they do next, dim the lights and switch to cheaper toilet paper?

Profanity is not allowed in the tech forums.

Daveybrat
AT Moderator
 
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Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
1,059
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He said he lost several hundred thousand dollars, not including the cost of some hardware parts....
Is Intel direcly liable for these damages, or the server provider who could not get the servers running reliably? He probably needs to sue the server provider for the damages, who then will sue Intel?
 

Doug S

Platinum Member
Feb 8, 2020
2,695
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Is Intel direcly liable for these damages, or the server provider who could not get the servers running reliably? He probably needs to sue the server provider for the damages, who then will sue Intel?

Yes, he can't sue Intel for problems with a part in hardware we bought from someone else.

Intel has pretty much insulated itself against any successful class action suit by bumping the warranty on those CPUs to five years. I would bet they don't get sued by PC OEMs they sell CPUs to - they'll probably make it up to them via discounts or rebates on future CPU purchases. There may be a few smaller OEMs that don't go along with that and sue, but it would hardly make the news if some small PC OEM no one has ever heard of with a turnover of $50 million a year sues Intel.

Intel has taken the publicity hit, but they've pretty much guaranteed this hit is the full extent of it. Consumers are covered, OEMs will get kickbacks to make it up, and that's that.
 
Reactions: lightmanek

Hulk

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 1999
4,451
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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).
Bingo.
 

jdubs03

Senior member
Oct 1, 2013
650
263
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Asus has put out a microcode update for the z790 motherboards. Might start getting news on whether there is an actual performance production. Their notes say improves performance, which is dubious. But let’s see. (Is beta though).

 
Reactions: lightmanek

DZero

Member
Jun 20, 2024
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I wrote:

" ... the maximum level could be 5600 MHz",

now I believe that this frequency is WAY TOO HIGH for long term stability. For high use intensity, the long lerm stable frequency could be in the 4 GHz region.
For that material it can go up to 5.2 Ghz at best.
 

Marcos Baras

Junior Member
Apr 25, 2024
7
0
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Has anyone tried to apply the latest microcode update on a low end Raptor Lake CPU? If you have done so, has the microcode version changed to x0129? Have you observed any changes at all?
I own an i5-13400F (stepping C0) and I have recently updated my BIOS version from December's 1602 to July's 1661. I hesitate to apply an update that may not even be necessary
Thx in advance!
 

KompuKare

Golden Member
Jul 28, 2009
1,163
1,424
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Has anyone tried to apply the latest microcode update on a low end Raptor Lake CPU? If you have done so, has the microcode version changed to x0129? Have you observed any changes at all?
I own an i5-13400F (stepping C0) and I have recently updated my BIOS version from December's 1602 to July's 1661. I hesitate to apply an update that may not even be necessary
Thx in advance! View attachment 105044
Isn't i5-13400F Alder Lake? Though all the C0 revisions were Alder Lake anyhow.
 

Marcos Baras

Junior Member
Apr 25, 2024
7
0
11
Isn't i5-13400F Alder Lake? Though all the C0 revisions were Alder Lake anyhow.
Indeed, theoretically it is an Alder Lake part, but Intel has never treated these models as it. Who knows if something related to voltage management has changed on the process of repurposing an i5-12600KF die for selling it as a Raptor Lake i5-13400F. Intel has never explicitely excluded these models, AFAIK, does he?
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
21,991
11,533
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@cebri1

Not really comprehensive, and it looks like he used the most aggressive performance profile available in the UEFI, which is . . . questionable, considering that Intel released more conservative power profiles in a previous attempt to save CPUs from degradation.
 

coercitiv

Diamond Member
Jan 24, 2014
6,592
13,899
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and it looks like he used the most aggressive performance profile available in the UEFI
He used the profile that Intel says should be stock for the 14900KS, which is Extreme. Intel provides profiles for each major K SKU named Baseline/Performance/Extreme, but the Default profile is not the same across SKUs. For i5 and i7 Intel recommends Performance profile, for i9 they say Extreme should be used. Baseline profile is only provided as fallback, when required for... compatibility

Confused yet? Yup, it's a mess. "Baseline" is not the default, and in fact is not recommended. Source.
 

Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
1,059
1,115
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I tried to run my 14900K with the new microcode and was getting 1,52V maximal voltage in HWinfo:





Then I was just reading a forum and my computer hard crashed, black screen and restart.

What does this mean? Is my CPU already degraded? Is the microcode faulty? Should I set something differently in the bios? I set nothing after the bios update except selecting 5600 MHz RAM preset.

Event logger shows just an unexpected PC shutdown.
 
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Hitman928

Diamond Member
Apr 15, 2012
6,019
10,339
136
I tried to run my 14900K with the new microcode and was getting 1,52V maximal voltage in HWinfo:

View attachment 105097

View attachment 105098

Then I was just reading a forum an my computer hard crashed, black screen and restart.

What does this mean? Is my CPU already degraded? Is the microcode faulty? Should I set something differently in the bios? I set nothing after the bios update except selecting 5600 MHz RAM preset.

Event logger shows just an unexpected PC shutdown.

These are beta BIOS releases, rushed out to get the new micro code out, so I wouldn’t jump to any conclusions until the regular BIOS versions come out.
 

Kocicak

Golden Member
Jan 17, 2019
1,059
1,115
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It just happened again, but this time with 5200/4000 MHz limits! If I go back to the previous bios, will the microcode revert back as well?
 
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