Friday, April 12th 2024
NVIDIA Points Intel Raptor Lake CPU Users to Get Help from Intel Amid System Instability Issues
According to a recently published help guide, spotted by the X/Twitter user @harukaze5719, NVIDIA has addressed reported stability problems users are experiencing with Intel's latest 13th and 14th generation Raptor Lake Core processors, especially the high-performance overclockable K-series models. In a recent statement, NVIDIA recommended that owners of the affected Intel CPUs consult directly with Intel if they encounter issues such as system instability, video memory errors, game crashes, or failures to launch certain applications. The problems seem particularly prevalent when running demanding workloads like gaming on Unreal Engine 5 titles or during shader compilation tasks that heavily utilize the processor and graphics capabilities. Intel has established a dedicated website to provide support for these CPU instability cases. However, the chipmaker still needs to issue a broad public statement and provide a definitive resolution.
The instability is often attributed to the very high frequencies and performance the K-series Raptor Lake chips are designed to achieve, which are among the fastest processors in Intel's lineup. While some community suggestions like undervolting or downclocking the CPUs may help mitigate issues in the short term, it remains unclear if permanent fixes will require BIOS updates from motherboard manufacturers or game patches.
Update: As the community has pointed out, motherboard makers often run the CPU outside of Intel's default spec, specifically causing overvolting through modifying or removing power limits, which could introduce instabilities into the system. Running the CPU at Intel-defined specification must be assured with a BIOS check to see if the CPU is running at specified targets. Intel programs the voltage curve into the CPU, and when motherboard makers remove any voltage/power limits, the CPU takes freedom in utilizing the available headroom, possibly causing system instability. We advise everyone to check the power limit setting in the BIOS for the health of their own system.
Sources:
NVIDIA, via VideoCardz
The instability is often attributed to the very high frequencies and performance the K-series Raptor Lake chips are designed to achieve, which are among the fastest processors in Intel's lineup. While some community suggestions like undervolting or downclocking the CPUs may help mitigate issues in the short term, it remains unclear if permanent fixes will require BIOS updates from motherboard manufacturers or game patches.
Update: As the community has pointed out, motherboard makers often run the CPU outside of Intel's default spec, specifically causing overvolting through modifying or removing power limits, which could introduce instabilities into the system. Running the CPU at Intel-defined specification must be assured with a BIOS check to see if the CPU is running at specified targets. Intel programs the voltage curve into the CPU, and when motherboard makers remove any voltage/power limits, the CPU takes freedom in utilizing the available headroom, possibly causing system instability. We advise everyone to check the power limit setting in the BIOS for the health of their own system.
106 Comments on NVIDIA Points Intel Raptor Lake CPU Users to Get Help from Intel Amid System Instability Issues
In reality, both AMD and Intel have a lot of collaboration with the motherboard companies. Very little is solely the fault of one or the other. Both this problem and the AMD problem are both solvable by BIOS updates and/or BIOS setting changes. Only brand loyalists try to deflect blame when in most instances the largest companies will try to place blame on the littlest companies if possible.
I've seen streamers have problems with the 14900K, especially in UE5 games. But those CPUs are completely ridiculous for gaming, especially with default BIOS settings which usually have some crazy things enabled.
Also, for the AMD CPU deaths in the past, you had to enable expo manually in the BIOS for the issue to occur. But on Intel it's the opposite, you pretty much have to change BIOS settings to revert to stock on Intel CPU's. for the issue to not occur That really shouldn't be the case and I wonder how many CPU's were affected by this degradation. I know a friend whose 13900K is having stability issues all of a sudden after a year or so, and he's been using 'stock' ASUS motherboard settings. Absolutely unacceptable, and I wonder why this hasn't been caught by Intel after what, 18 months? Aren't they supposed to be testing the CPU's over time along with the motherboard manufacturers? Maybe if they focused less on extracting 200mhz for 150W more power they'd have figured it out by now.
And I don't buy games at launch anymore. They run much better after a few months worth of patches, and you get a nice discount. If a game is too heavy for my config, I'll play it after the next upgrade.
The main difference is that its all enabled by default on intel boards, with AMD you need to enable it.
default should = to specification
If they can't do this and/or don't do this, they should not be in the motherboard business.
My 14900K is locked to intel limits though, Asus default settings were insane.
My 13900HX of course is low power being in a laptop.
Both are rock solid stable.
I mean ..I've got the VRM's but.. Wait and see..
I researched this quite a bit and found a post on Reddit talking about it and then a video by De8auer who talked about this issue too.
I would highly recommend folks manually set the stock limits for their respective processors and give it a go. For the longest time, I thought it was my RAM but nope, it was the CPU and voltages/currents that the motherboard was trying to force.
Reviewers, and consumers, award motherboard makers for even a fraction faster performance - but we know it's just an out of spec setting, a factory overclock. Do you have instabilities, or has your PC just died because of that? That's the part of being in PC Glorious Master Race - you gambled with a cutting edge, and got cut.
The fact is that Intel for several generations now advertises one set of settings when they talk about efficiency, but quite another when they talk about performance. Some reviewers have even gone so far that they hid they used different motherboard settings for different measurements - and later claimed they didn't have to disclose that, because they are all "stock" - some are stock Intel recommended settings, other are stock settings motherboards set as default.
Intel of course knows and validates all the overclock that's going on. And when motherboard vendors finally go too far, they can always wash their hands, point out to them, and claim... Ignorance? Amnesia?
It's nice to have your cake and eat it too, to claim efficient CPUs that barely sip electricity, and on the other hand to claim performance crown (in select areas we proclaim are the only ones relevant), even for the sake of making extremely hot, extremely power hungry products that are destroying themselves in their default settings - "It wasn't our setting!"
RTX 4090s continue to melt — GPU repair facility claims it works on 200 flagship Nvidia cards per month | Tom's Hardware (tomshardware.com)
In saying that, we don't know which GPU's are having issues with these so-called Intel CPU's but you would think if people have the money for i9's they prob have 4090 as well.
Meanwhile my undervolted 13700K + 4090 (with original 12VHPWR connector) are much more stable, though I had to lower CPU clock by 100mhz (5.4ghz P-Cores instead of 5.5ghz) because HD2 utilize the CPU much more heavily than any other game.
There are always some failures with mass-produced electronics, but real statistics tells us whether there is a widespread defect/design flaw, or if this is just noise from a few people shouting very loudly.
Most of us probably remember the RTX 2080 Ti debacle, which eventually turned out to be tied to EVGA's designs, and excluding these left them with completely normal failure rates. But people still remember it as a Nvidia issue, when in this specific case it was an AiB vendor issue.
I would very much like to see statistics (even if it's just relative numbers) of how many CPUs are RMAed, and of these, how many are have been running completely stock (incl. memory) and are still confirmed to be defective. If the resulting figure is anywhere close to 1% (with a good sample size), then there is certainly a hardware issue. Also, if proven true, it will be interesting whether the resulting bad chips are tied to the same batches, or if it's evenly spread across everything (a widespread quality issue or design flaw). If upgrading or downgrading your BIOS doesn't resolve the issue, and you run everything within Intel's power limits and your memory at stock JEDEC speeds, and the problem is still as reproducible as you portrait it, then I would ask if either you (or someone in the same situation) would be willing to try installing a Linux distro like Ubuntu on a separate drive, just for testing purposes. Because if you do, then reproducing the same error on a completely different software stack will eliminate the software and lead you to the conclusion you have defective hardware (in which case you should RMA it). But this is only if you feel comfortable with this.
I get the impression that this issue is related to the amount of operating margin that the 13th and 14th gen chips have been engineered with, relative to the 12th gen. They all run on the same motherboards to date and I have not heard anything like this for the 12th gen. So whatever motherboard "boost" or "OC" that applies to all 12th to 14th gen chips eats away the safety margin in the 13th and 14th, but not the 12th, because it has a bigger physical safety margin.