The other day Intel released an official statement, claiming that “elevated operating voltages” are causing instability issues in some 13th and 14th Gen Raptor Lake-S desktop processors. The deviation in the core voltage has been attributed to a microcode algorithm causing incorrect voltage requests to the processor. The chipmaker intends to release a microcode update to rectify this issue (by mid-August), one that will likely hurt performance as well. Either way, it should prevent or at least limit the damage caused to the rest of the 13900K and 14900K SKUs.
Users affected by this issue will likely know that this isn’t Intel’s first attempt to alleviate the relatively widespread defect. Recommending the “Intel Default” power delivery profile was the first one that didn’t help most users (including us). Apart from the enforcement of the official 253W boost power (PL2) limit, a peak ICCmax value of 400A was recommended. CEP (Current Excursion Protection) and eTVB (Enhanced Thermal Velocity) should also be enabled.
The second attempt at damage control came on the 18th of June in the form of the eTVB firmware update. While it reduced the frequency of the crashes, Unreal Engine 5 titles like “The First Descendant” remained unplayable for several users.
As noted by Jaykihn (on Twitter/X), Intel’s latest statement only addresses the “root cause of exposure to elevated voltages” which according to the chipmaker was the result of a buggy microcode algorithm. It does not tackle the root cause of the widespread instability (of varying kinds) faced by numerous gamers globally. It also doesn’t touch upon the gradual degradation of 13th and 14th Gen processors, as reported by Alderon Games.
Over the last 3–4 months, we have observed that CPUs initially working well deteriorate over time, eventually failing. The failure rate we have observed from our own testing is nearly 100%, indicating it’s only a matter of time before affected CPUs fail. This issue is gaining attention from news outlets and has been noted by Fortnite and RAD Game Tools, which powers decompression behind Unreal Engine.
