Intel hasfinally provided an updateoninstability issueson 13th - gen and 14th - gen central processor . An update post by Thomas Hannaford , Intel ’s communications manager , pins the instability on an erroneous belief in the firmware that requests incorrect potential drop numbers , leading to instability in the C.P.U. .

The company is releasing a microcode dapple that “ addresses the ascendant cause of exposure to idealistic voltages . ” Intel says that update should arrive in mid - August . In the meantime , Intel encourages substance abuser who are experiencing instability issues to achieve out to its support team for assistance . The firmware error was discovered after Intel reviewed processors that were return due to stability issues , suggesting Intel desire to make the billet ripe with affected user — though it barricade short ofapologizing for a month - foresightful droughton communication on the matter .

Up to this point , Intel ’s guidancehas been a tilt of dense BIOS configurations that could reduce performanceby upwards of 9%on CPUs like the Core i9 - 13900 K and Core i9 - 14900K. The microcode update have at a deeper consequence within the central processor , which should hopefully better the site on Intel ’s recent in high spirits - death CPUs .

The timing is strange , however . Intel has stayed mostly mum on instability up to this point , leaving it to third partiesto investigate the scope and severity of the trouble . The billet today come a little over a workweek before AMD is place to set in motion itsRyzen 9000 background processor . The instability issues on 13th - gen and 14th - gen CPUs is sure to be a topic of conversation , with some , such as Gamer ’s link , proceed as far to say that they refuse to recommend an Intel processor until the stability issues are addressed .

Intel is also ignoring a host of issues that have been brought up since the stability concerns came to light . An investigating from Level1Techs revealed that even 13th - gen and 14th - gen CPUs running in servers experienced instability , despite much more conservative power configurations .

In accession , it ’s been several months since the first report of instability came out . We typically see firmware issues addressed in a matter of day , and if it was truly a microcode wrongdoing request improper voltages , you ’d expect Intel would be able to narrow down that issue quickly . I ’ve asked Intel why it took so long to find the firmware error , and here ’s what it told me :

“ Due to the extremely complex nature of instability issuing and related campaign – let in the trouble associated with physical failure analysis on returned parts from customer – in - astuteness debug , modelling , and analytic thinking is required to to the full understand the nature of the instability issue and its related causes . Determining the causes of this complex effect and developing appropriate extenuation require a important amount of examination , psychoanalysis , and validation . ”

Although it ’s reassuring to know that Intel is working on a solvent , the saga with instability is far from over . give the scope and timeline of this way out , it ’s hard to conceive of a microcode error requesting unlawful potential difference is really the tooth root cause . Right now , all we can do is wait until mid - August , when Intel plans to unfreeze its microcode update to see if the stableness situation improves .