Intel processors crashing Unreal engine games (and others)

[DAPUNISHER]

Isnt a rumour stating that ARL is projected to be set at 188W TDP..?.

If that s true then they ll compare it to RPL at this power, they ll lose the opportunity
to state a much better perf/Watt but they ll gain in perfs improvement numbers.

Taking this long to make a public response indicates they are efforting this incredibly hard from every facet from legal to technical to PR. If they don't spin doctor it and take it on the chin they will keep some street cred. I hope that's the direction they take. Deny RMAs? Deflect culpability? Pretend the performance is "expected and normal behavior" and no amount of social media management and engagement will damage control it.

Ehh, if there is a potential lawsuit, I suspect Intel will probably fight tooth and nail for a few years before settling for a few hundred thousand and then everyone gets like $20 for their troubles. In the grand scheme of things, it was worth it for Intel to pump up the power to inflate benchmarks.

Maybe I’m a little jaded, but that’s what history has shown will happen.

Intel definitely seems to be able to do that here in the U.S. But the E.U. will clap their cheeks hard.

 

[krumme]

Will this affect my i9 notebook cpu?

 

[Mahboi]

Will this affect my i9 notebook cpu?

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[krumme]

I guess. Lol. Certainly its using power like crazy, and more like big desktop cpu. I would clasify it as 130w tdp cpu just from subjective experience. it's a i9 13900hx or. It will be interesting to see if we get some mb updates for it. I would have opted for mobile amd if they had just not halfed the l3. The min fps you know and the i9 delivers here but damn it's eating power all the time.

 

[Saylick]

I'm not so sure this was worth it at all. This is the kind of widespread fiasco that will absolutely lead to intel losing not just even more DIY, but OEMs as well.

There are countless Dell, HP, Lenovo, Asus, and MSI prebuilt boxes sold with i7 and i9 K-SKUs at a tidy markup that are even more heinously thermally constricted than custom built gaming machines. These are going to come back for RMA, OR people are going to ask for their money back after the new BIOS nerfs performance.

Those people are going to treat their experience with 13th-14th gen like your dad talks about his one friend that bought a Yugo in the 1980s - a horrible mistake that lead to heartbreak and headaches whether or not they get their system stable or their money back.

Taking this long to make a public response indicates they are efforting this incredibly hard from every facet from legal to technical to PR. If they don't spin doctor it and take it on the chin they will keep some street cred. I hope that's the direction they take. Deny RMAs? Deflect culpability? Pretend the performance is "expected and normal behavior" and no amount of social media management and engagement will damage control it.

Intel definitely seems to be able to do that here in the U.S. But the E.U. will clap their cheeks hard.

I hope both of y'all are right. Intel has gotten away with too much stuff in the past and unfairly benefitted from them, too. I really despise "too big to fail" corporations.

 

[coercitiv]

In the grand scheme of things, it was worth it for Intel to pump up the power to inflate benchmarks.

It depends a lot on how quickly and efficiently they can make it go away. They no longer benefit from the market leader halo, that's when you get to convince consumers they should put chips in their oven. If this ends up affecting their ARL launch, they will bleed mind share even if the financial cost seems negligible.

 

[KompuKare]

I hope both of y'all are right. Intel has gotten away with too much stuff in the past and unfairly benefitted from them, too. I really despise "too big to fail" corporations.

I too hope they don't get away with this. Upto 40% loss for plain 14900 etc. is totally unprecedented, I think.

However, look at the total lack of courage displayed, amongst others, ComputerBase. Their article from 2024-04-06:

(Intel baseline profile: BIOS updates for unstable K CPUs detailed.)
that's now over 10 ten days old, and the article index's says "Benchmarken folgen" (benchmarks to follow) and that has remained unpublished ever since.

Talk about not wanting to rock the boat and their relationship with Intel PR!

 

[Saylick]

It depends a lot on how quickly and efficiently they can make it go away. They no longer benefit from the market leader halo, that's when you get to convince consumers they should put chips in their oven. If this ends up affecting their ARL launch, they will bleed mind share even if the financial cost seems negligible.

I agree. This needs to affect OEMs in mass before it really hurts their bottom line, imo. I think the DIY market is just too tiny and doesn't have a loud enough voice to really hurt their mindshare. We may hear it loudly since we are enthusiasts, but it won't really impact the broader mindshare until big time news outlets start reporting on it. This situation isn't quite on the same level as like when Samsung's phone battery spontaneously combusted, although one can argue it should be if say the NY Times had an article with the headline "Consumers with the latest Intel CPUs face up to 40% loss in performance with latest update".

 

[Abwx]

Taking this long to make a public response indicates they are efforting this incredibly hard from every facet from legal to technical to PR. If they don't spin doctor it and take it on the chin they will keep some street cred. I hope that's the direction they take. Deny RMAs? Deflect culpability? Pretend the performance is "expected and normal behavior" and no amount of social media management and engagement will damage control it.

Intel definitely seems to be able to do that here in the U.S. But the E.U. will clap their cheeks hard.

Laws ar

I too hope they don't get away with this. Upto 40% loss for plain 14900 etc. is totally unprecedented, I think.

However, look at the total lack of courage displayed, amongst others, ComputerBase. Their article from 2024-04-06:

(Intel baseline profile: BIOS updates for unstable K CPUs detailed.)
that's now over 10 ten days old, and the article index's says "Benchmarken folgen" (benchmarks to follow) and that has remained unpublished ever since.

Talk about not wanting to rock the boat and their relationship with Intel PR!

Although they do nice reviews Computerbase are not neutral when it comes to Intel and that was proven in th past, just ask them how they got a dual Xeon 8380 for free apparently.

Not counting their ST test that use 3 softs out of 3 that all favour Intel, they cant ignore that CB R20/R23 favour intel and that the third one, Povray, do not use AVX2 for AMD CPUs hence reducing its perfs by 15%.

 

[Jan Olšan]

The legal team will crash repeatedly due to mysterious out of memory errors

Q: Did Intel say that increasing PL2 is fine and is covered by warranty?

A: Get out of my memory, pesky little error!

 

[lakedude]

One thing I can't shake is the lack of admission from owners of these CPUs that have encountered instability.

Did these people just shrug it off on game crashes and just blame it on the game?

Until the last few years I'd have blamed the game, drivers, Windows, RAM, the MB or the GPU before considering the CPU. Most of my issues in the distant past were sloved with game patches and driver updates.

Looks like Intel = rock solid is no longer the norm.

Way to go Boeing er I mean Intel.

 

[APU_Fusion]

I imagine this will look horrendous against zen 5 with the bioses fixed

 

[GaiaHunter]

I imagine this will look horrendous against zen 5 with the bioses fixed

The sad part is that it didn't even look good to start with against zen4

 

[Markfw]

The sad part is that it didn't even look good to start with against zen4

Thats what I said, but those who favor Intel said "no look, the 14900k wins this benchmark". And I said "at what wattage", and they said "who cares".

Not lets see what they say.

 

[lakedude]

Thats what I said, but those who favor Intel said "no look, the 14900k wins this benchmark". And I said "at what wattage", and they said "who cares".

Not lets see what they say.

To be fair it wasn't that long ago that the situation was reversed and AMD was the power hog.

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tenor.com

 

[Abwx]

To be fair it wasn't that long ago that the situation was reversed and AMD was the power hog.

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When was this "not long ago"..?..
Because as AFAIR AMD had very good perf watt since 2017 and Zen 1.

 

[lakedude]

When was this "not long ago"..?..

My current desktop CPU is an AMD but my last desktop CPU was an Intel, chosen for superior efficiency IIRC.

Of course this was back when Intel was tick-tocking on the regular and not stuck on the same node for years at a time.

Got me one of those fancy Intel fin-FETs when they were they were hot off the presses. Ivy Bridge, they called it.

Now I don't remember what AMD had at that time because I had fin-FET fever. Those fins worked like disk brakes and are still the standard today, but maybe not for much longer in favor of GAA...

I'm not partial to one company but I've taken a lot more crap over the years from AMD users than from Intel user. It would have been easier to take if they were right but they were not.

Examples:

1) At one time AMD did not include any thermal protection in their CPUs so for reliability reasons our company sold Intel exclusively in spite of AMD having better price per performance. One of the guys who said I was stupid later burned up his AMD CPU because it lacked thermal protection.

2) AMD users gave me grief over purchasing a P4 for video compression, this in spite of the fact that the P4 was the best tool for compression at the time. Sure the AMD chips of the day were better all around but the P4 was best for video compression. Back then compressing a video was an overnight job, now my phone can do it faster than real time on battery power.

Fanboy and all derivatives are not permitted in the tech forums. I changed it to users, a word that doesn't result in the versus flamebait mentality. This is also offtopic and whataboutism.

Mod DAPUNISHER

 

[Thunder 57]

My current desktop CPU is an AMD but my last desktop CPU was an Intel, chosen for superior efficiency IIRC.

Of course this was back when Intel was tick-tocking on the regular and not stuck on the same node for years at a time.

Got me one of those fancy Intel fin-FETs when they were they were hot off the presses. Ivy Bridge, they called it.

Now I don't remember what AMD had at that time because I had fin-FET fever. Those fins worked like disk brakes and are still the standard today, but maybe not for much longer in favor of GAA...

I'm not partial to one company but I've taken a lot more crap over the years from AMD fans than from Intel fans. It would have been easier to take if they were right but they were not.

Examples:

1) At one time AMD did not include any thermal protection in their CPUs so for reliability reasons our company sold Intel exclusively in spite of AMD having better price per performance. One of the guys who said I was stupid later burned up his AMD CPU because it lacked thermal protection.

2) AMD fans gave me grief over purchasing a P4 for video compression, this in spite of the fact that the P4 was the best tool for compression at the time. Sure the AMD chips of the day were better all around but the P4 was best for video compression. Back then compressing a video was an overnight job, now my phone can do it faster than real time on battery power.

Lol are you holding grudes from over 20 years ago? Because that's when an AMD CPU lacked thermal protection. The P4 was generally crap but in code that wasn't branchy and likely took advantage of SSE2 (video compression) it did actually perform quite well. Still though, this is over 20 years later man. As Elsa once sang, "Let it go".

Also the last Intel CPU to have superior efficiency was almost certainly pre Zen, so 2016 or so. I would hardly call 8 years "not long ago". And yes Ivy Bridge was a champ. Sandy Bridge gets the credit, but Ivy Bridge brought the platform up to date. PCIe 3 and USB 3. I rocked that for at least 6 years.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I'm not partial to one company but I've taken a lot more crap over the years from AMD fans than from Intel fans.

Fans spin relentlessly so it's understandable that their blades will show no mercy to anything in their path. My condolences. I hope the gashes weren't too deep.

 

[Ranulf]

My current desktop CPU is an AMD but my last desktop CPU was an Intel, chosen for superior efficiency IIRC.

Of course this was back when Intel was tick-tocking on the regular and not stuck on the same node for years at a time.

Got me one of those fancy Intel fin-FETs when they were they were hot off the presses. Ivy Bridge, they called it.

Now I don't remember what AMD had at that time because I had fin-FET fever. Those fins worked like disk brakes and are still the standard today, but maybe not for much longer in favor of GAA...

I'm not partial to one company but I've taken a lot more crap over the years from AMD fans than from Intel fans. It would have been easier to take if they were right but they were not.

Examples:

1) At one time AMD did not include any thermal protection in their CPUs so for reliability reasons our company sold Intel exclusively in spite of AMD having better price per performance. One of the guys who said I was stupid later burned up his AMD CPU because it lacked thermal protection.

2) AMD fans gave me grief over purchasing a P4 for video compression, this in spite of the fact that the P4 was the best tool for compression at the time. Sure the AMD chips of the day were better all around but the P4 was best for video compression. Back then compressing a video was an overnight job, now my phone can do it faster than real time on battery power.

Must be fresh fin-fet chirpin season out there in the sweltering sweatlands known as Meteor Lake.

Nowadays no one remembers the lowest of the low, the 65 watters. They've been passed up for PL states of 253 watts. Performance and power over performance and efficiency. They way to be for you and me. Thats S&P there bud.

Remember such highlights as "its a space heater!" and "It'll cook a egg for ya!"? I sure do and thats whats I appreciates about thems partialities peoples. The good ol' motrin pain of the day and the pepto bismal upset of the week.

 

[lakedude]

Lol are you holding grudes from over 20 years ago?

Not really a grudge as much as an interesting story from the past (hopefully). I mean dude's computer burned up, so there is a lesson in there about max performance at the expense of all else. Performance, cost, reliability, and efficiency are all important and it is up to the user to decide which features are most important to them.

Also if you have a special use case the prevailing wisdom about which hardware is the "best" may not apply to you.

Also the last Intel CPU to have superior efficiency was almost certainly pre Zen, so 2016 or so. I would hardly call 8 years "not long ago".

You would hardly call 8 years "not long ago", but for me the Ivy Bridge was the last computer I built before the AMD rig which is only a few months old. It is only 1 computer ago and only by a few months at that.

There have been laptops and one newer computer that was a gift but as far as me picking the parts Ivy Bridge was the last time.

AMD got the nod this time around in large part due to the topic of this thread which is Intel's sketchy power consumption which reduced my trust in Intel, a major goof-up on their part because other than a few missteps I held Intel in fairly high regard, same with Boeing. They have both killed their hard earned reputations.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I disagree. Intel's boost algo takes into account individual core temps on top of power and current limits (whether they are enforced or not). Not only that, Intel has more than one thermal throttling mechanics available in their latest CPUs. The limit is also configurable, I have mine lowered from 100C to 85C using UEFI settings. The CPU will not exceed this ceiling, and will individually throttle cores as they reach the limit.

How does Intel's boost algorithm calculate appropriate clockspeed and voltage while using temperature as a factor? From what I can see, Intel's algorithm doesn't reference temperature at all, and instead slams straight into whichever limit it hits first - temperature, clockspeed, current draw, or power/time limit (the power limits have been removed for many "stock" Intel CPUs so it'll blow straight past PL and tau values). AMD's boost algorithm has used temperature as a reference point for some time (see: video of an early review of the 3800X in which stock boost behavior is altered by dipping a wc rad into a bucket of icewater).

 

[coercitiv]

From what I can see, Intel's algorithm doesn't reference temperature at all, and instead slams straight into whichever limit it hits first - temperature, clockspeed, current draw, or power/time limit

It looks like you'd like you play Jeopardy.

What is Intel Adaptive Thermal Monitor? (with both frequency/voltage control and clock modulation)
What is Thermal Velocity Boost? (with both Ratio Clipping and Voltage Optimization)

The hardware and software tools are there, engineers did their job. It's the decision makers who played fast and loose, unlike with AMD where somebody in engineering had the last word when it came to enforcing limits.

 

[igor_kavinski]

What is Intel Adaptive Thermal Monitor? (with both frequency/voltage control and clock modulation)
What is Thermal Velocity Boost? (with both Ratio Clipping and Voltage Optimization)

Are you the type who reads these things for fun?

I have to ask: are you a CPU engineer/architect? If yes, any CPU I may know of?

 

[coercitiv]

Are you the type who reads these things for fun?

We both are, you just haven't accepted it yet.