Monday, August 5th 2024
Puget Systems Releases CPU Failure Report: AMD CPUs Achieve Higher Failure Rate Than Intel 13th and 14th Generation
A fleet of recent reports have highlighted stability issues affecting Intel's 13th and 14th-generation desktop processors, raising concerns among consumers and industry professionals. The problem, which has gained significant attention over the past few months, is related to the processors' physical degradation over time. Custom PC builder Puget Systems has shared insights from its experience with these processors, revealing a nuanced perspective on the issue. While it has observed an increase in CPU failures, particularly with the 14th-generation chips, its failure rates remain notably lower than those reported by some game development studios and cloud gaming providers, who have cited failure rates as high as 50%. An interesting observation is that Puget Systems recorded a higher failure rate with AMD Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 7000 series than Intel's 13/14th generation, with most failures happening at Puget's shop rather than the "field" in customers' hands.
Puget Systems attributes their more modest failure rates of Intel processors to their conservative approach to power management settings. By adhering strictly to Intel's specifications and developing their own power settings that don't hurt performance, they've managed to mitigate some of the stability issues plaguing other users. Intel has acknowledged the problem and announced plans to release a microcode patch by mid-August, with extended warranty program. This update is expected to prevent further degradation but may not reverse existing damage. Despite the elevated failure rates, Puget Systems' data shows that the issue, while concerning, still needs to be at critical levels for their operations. The company reports that failure rates for 13th and 14th gen Intel processors, while higher than ideal, are still lower than those they experienced with Intel's 11th gen chips and some AMD Ryzen processors. In response to the situation, Puget Systems is taking several steps, including maintaining its current power management practices, promptly validating Intel's upcoming microcode update, and extending warranties for affected customers. Below, you can see failure rates by month, by Intel's Core generation, as well as by "shop" vs "field" testing.
Source:
Puget Systems
Puget Systems attributes their more modest failure rates of Intel processors to their conservative approach to power management settings. By adhering strictly to Intel's specifications and developing their own power settings that don't hurt performance, they've managed to mitigate some of the stability issues plaguing other users. Intel has acknowledged the problem and announced plans to release a microcode patch by mid-August, with extended warranty program. This update is expected to prevent further degradation but may not reverse existing damage. Despite the elevated failure rates, Puget Systems' data shows that the issue, while concerning, still needs to be at critical levels for their operations. The company reports that failure rates for 13th and 14th gen Intel processors, while higher than ideal, are still lower than those they experienced with Intel's 11th gen chips and some AMD Ryzen processors. In response to the situation, Puget Systems is taking several steps, including maintaining its current power management practices, promptly validating Intel's upcoming microcode update, and extending warranties for affected customers. Below, you can see failure rates by month, by Intel's Core generation, as well as by "shop" vs "field" testing.
127 Comments on Puget Systems Releases CPU Failure Report: AMD CPUs Achieve Higher Failure Rate Than Intel 13th and 14th Generation
Now instead of getting ahead of a potential issue they've very likely created concern among their AMD users. Even if their intent was good to begin with, the end result is they've seeded unfounded concern.
AMD CPUs Achieve Higher Failure Rate Than Intel 13th and 14th GenerationIntel 11th Generation failed big time in both performance and relability.
The pugent data being different to others is explained in the article itself, they dont use stock bios settings.
The failure rate for Raptor lake currently is clearly lower than some of these claims, if it was e.g. 50%, the internet discussions would be wildly different to what they are now, e.g. we have one confirmed TPU user with a failed chip out of what I have seen a dozen or so Intel owners, Jay2cents says his i9 might be potentially affected as it has started becoming unstable, as well as buildzoid (although buildzoid's chip was unstable from day 1, and becomes stable when run at Intel spec, so his isnt in the degradation category for me) but none of the other tech youtubers have reported issues.
Other named sources are gaming companies. Of which we dont know really what their sample sizes are either, whether they too small or not as one of the arguments to discredit puget. Their systems are probably running at bios stock settings or close to it.
On Intel baseline, performance, extreme, even in performance and extreme spec, there is bios's out of spec.
Puget also have shown that a previous gen Intel has highest failure rates in their systems, not a AMD CPU.
Where I do agree is that 14th gen being the newest gen, that the bar might well continue to increase as its new, but this of course will also apply to AMD 7000 series.
Its not hard to find failure reports for any product, but usually such reports dont gain much momentum, they put down to unstable RAM or whatever, of course right now there is massive momentum on these Intel issues, which means suddenly anyone who has "any" kind of instability suddenly has a faulty chip.
Granted, that r squared could stand to be a bit higher before I'd consider it accurate. ;)
Puget is semi-local to me. Few-years back I had the delusion I might be able to work there, and researched their builds and articles some.
I will say tho... my 1st boxed R5 5600 lost a core; first time ever having a CPU 'go bad'.
IMO, the small-lithography 'highly dense' silicon we see today, implicitly is going to have a higher failure rate (major design-level defects, aside)
I've always thought "buy whatever suits your needs". For-profit companies are not your friends. Not Intel, nor AMD, heck, not even Puget Systems. They're all in it for the money, nothing else. Why people can't comprehend this simple fact is beyond me.
www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/what-is-the-most-reliable-hardware-in-our-puget-systems-workstations-1550/
Funny, their report of DOA units seem way below reviews on the outside like NewEgg for example.
www.newegg.com/core-i7-9th-gen-intel-core-i7-9700k/p/N82E16819117958#IsFeedbackTab
Just another User Benchmark website, nuff said.
-= edited=-
Forgot to post meme :D
Keep your drivel where the sun don't shine, and your product too.
There's a real conclusion we could draw here (not that it's new), which is that Intel could have avoided a lot of issues on Raptor lake if they made a decision ahead of time to keep the power usage at a reasonable level by default and set up the micro-codes (and default BIOS settings for board partners) accordingly. The data from Puget proves that to be true. It doesn't mean there still wouldn't be issues here and there, but it shows that at least some of the issues are from Intel not putting out any clear rules on default BIOS settings or V/F behavior in their own micro-codes.I completely agree with the first part here about Puget. They have been very slow to even entertain the idea of AMD systems and had a skew towards Intel that was only exceeded by the likes of Dell/HP/etc. That said, Steve of Gamer's Nexus is someone people need to be careful of when watching their content. I watch it too and most of the time he's spot on with things, but he gets carried away sometimes and then starts this spiral of nit-pick and blowing things out of proportion when he gets stuck on a topic. The fact that intel has been so wishy-washy with default BIOS settings for a long time has been probably the biggest annoyance of Steve that I've seen and he gets angrier about it every time the topic comes up. It's a real issue that leads to discrepancies in failures, performance, etc. and he's right about that, but he then takes it soooooo far that logic and reason get left behind. We all have our biases and I think his are a little harder to spot, but if you watch his reviews, there's usually something for each architecture, product, whatever that bothers him and it'll skew the whole review. Getting people to watch their videos (and buy their merch) is their business and income, so they do sometimes go into full click-bait titles, thumbnails, and even sometimes the stories are a bit exaggerated at points or over-the-top. I'm not saying he's terrible, but I think people take it as 100% fact or look at it as unbiased every time, when you always need to consider the facts for yourself and draw your own conclusions because even Steve is biased and sometimes wrong (or at least exaggerating) about things because of that.^Exactly. That right there is why Puget put their article out. There are all these videos and articles out about Intel having issues and they sell primarily intel machines so they felt they needed to calm their customers down. It's just about protecting the revenue for them. I didn't see anything in their article that was really taking sides or saying "AMD BAD" lol, just trying to claim that even though intel is having issues, they have a "unique" and special approach that makes them the company to give your money to, whether you want an AMD or Intel workstation.