Intel Statement on Stability Issues: "Motherboard Makers to Blame"

[Solaris17]

Posting specs has nothing to do with tightening up, as @Crackong explained in the post #157

You think they would give us the user what they do on ark and NOT give the oem the values when they give they idk tell them how to use the CPUs in a new chipset? Thats a new level of denial. AMD board partners do the same shit. Did AMD not give them the specs when ASUS was burning holes in the core?

Get real.

 

[RGAFL]

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with Intel Shill. How the hell is bringing a AMD Agesa problem that was fixed fairly rapidly into a discussion about Intel power limits that has been going on for a few years now justified. The only way Intel could keep up with AMD is with jacking the power up to 11. How that can be defended and justified is beyond me. This is also from a staff member going by the profile. I hope you don't do any AMD reviews.

 

[Tek-Check]

You think they would give us the user what they do on ark and NOT give the oem the values when they give they idk tell them how to use the CPUs in a new chipset? Thats a new level of denial. AMD board partners do the same shit. Did AMD not give them the specs when ASUS was burning holes in the core?
Get real.

Nice try, but the article and topic are about Intel. Focus.
Why did everyone suddently scramble to introduce BIOS update with "Intel Baseline Profile"? Isn't that something that should be there by default when buyers purchase motherboards?

 

[Solaris17]

I spy with my little eye, something beginning with Intel Shill. How the hell is bringing a AMD Agesa problem that was fixed fairly rapidly into a discussion about Intel power limits that has been going on for a few years now justified. The only way Intel could keep up with AMD is with jacking the power up to 11. How that can be defended and justified is beyond me. This is also from a staff member going by the profile. I hope you don't do any AMD reviews.

I own AMD systems these two companies have both been doing this for years. “It was an agesa problem” like it’s a bios problem here? You can’t have your cake and eat it. Either both companies really love money and look the other way or by your logic both companies are so negligent they didn’t pass on the voltage values which is it?

board partners are doing this because it sells boards. How is MSI going to sell you an $1100 meg if it performs the same as a z760? Do you really want nehamic audio? No.

if you want to get on your “intel bad” conspiracy soap box for mobo makers being negligent wait until you stumble across these voltage increases over time steadily selling more coolers.

you people preach intel is big bad but the SAME mobo manufacturers that are bumping up the voltages were welding IHSs to AMD coolers months ago.

make up your mind.

 

[RGAFL]

You think they would give us the user what they do on ark and NOT give the oem the values when they give they idk tell them how to use the CPUs in a new chipset? Thats a new level of denial. AMD board partners do the same shit. Did AMD not give them the specs when ASUS was burning holes in the core?

Get real.

The common theme with that issue was ASUS. There was reports of a few ASRock and Gigabyte users it happened to but one of the users of said boards said they copied the info from a website giving information about the ASUS settings into a Gigabyte board and BOOM. The Intel problem is widespread across motherboard vendors. Wonder where they got the information from or who allowed them to do that. Do Intel not validate their vendor BIOSES. This is a thing Intel have been doing for a few generations of CPU now. Ramping up the power to get near to AMD. If you want to defend that be my guest. What I would take is AM4 which is pretty much rock solid now or AM5 which again after a few early issues and one particular motherboard vendor taking a few liberties is now pretty much there.

 

[mkppo]

Funny how the people defending intel conveniently ignore the comments intel made publicly about the fact that maxed out power limits and all the shenanigans the board partners were doing are "within spec" only to backtrack now and blame the board partners.

Atleast AMD didn't stoop that low. Intel reeks of desperation now and I guess the defensive attitude stems from that. How far they've fallen..

 

[Tek-Check]

you people preach intel is big bad but the SAME mobo manufacturers that are bumping up the voltages were welding IHSs to AMD coolers months ago.

Focus on Intel. This is the thread and article about their alleged wrong-doings. Intel is supposed to validate BIOS-es from all vendors so that their CPUs work correctly. If Intel had not been satisfied with high benchmarks, they would have never allowed vendors to run their CPUs with extreme custom profiles. But, they overcooked it... and now they blame mobo vendors for what they allowed them to do. You know this, we know this, Intel know this, vendors know it. Now it's about face-saving and it's ugly so far.

 

[Dr. Dro]

AMD also has the benefit of typically not lying

I seem to recall that "Zen 3 on X370 was impossible due to BIOS ROM size limitations" and that the official solution was literally "upgrade your garbage first-generation motherboard", yet they're running the Zen 3 X3D chips just fine nowadays... all it took was Alder Lake?

Oh it goes even further back then that. The board venders have been progressively ignoring every limit one by one and Intel turned a blind eye every time until now.
https://gamersnexus.net/guides/3389-intel-tdp-investigation-9900k-violating-turbo-duration-z390

First it was the Turbo Duration, then the PL and Voltage, and most recently the current extrusion protection on 14th gen.
GIGABYTE Releases CEP Disable Option in BIOS Updates to its Intel Z790 and B760 Motherboards | TechPowerUp
Apperently it comes from a microcode released months ago, and Intel is the only one that can release microcodes for their CPUs.
The list goes on, as long as CB R23 score goes up Intel did not care. The CPU just needed to live long enough for the reviews.

MSI: Nope
https://videocardz.com/newz/msi-z79...ases-intel-cpu-throttling-temperature-to-115c
Users have to go out of their way to set the "stock" values on DIY boards.
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-14th-gen-unboxing-preview/2.html
The Asus board used was kindy provided by Intel.
Intel Core i9-14900K Review - Reaching for the Performance Crown - Test Setup | TechPowerUp
View attachment 345734
View attachment 345733

Just for the record, W1zzard deliberately disables the thermal and current protection for these tests. There is no circumstance under which a Raptor Lake processor will casually hit 115°C without the user disabling the thermal protection out of their own volition.

 

[Vya Domus]

yet they're running the Zen 3 X3D chips just fine nowadays

Yeah but I am pretty sure those BIOS revisions removed support for some older CPUs, that's how they got around the limitation. I don't see how they were lying, it was true that it was not possible to add support for those CPUs, at least not without cutting stuff out.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yeah but I am pretty sure those BIOS revisions removed support for some older CPUs, that's how they got around the limitation. I don't see how they were lying, it was true that it was not possible to add support for those CPUs, at least not without cutting stuff out.

Ah yes, everyone demanding support for Zen 3 was just dying to retain the ability to use those masterpieces of superior AMD engineering, those incredibly high performance, cherished Excavator chips...

 

[RGAFL]

Yeah but I am pretty sure those BIOS revisions removed support for some older CPUs, that's how they got around the limitation. I don't see how they were lying, it was true that it was not possible to add support for those CPUs, at least not without cutting stuff out.

Yes, CPU's stripped out were, believe it or not, Bulldozer/Excavator/Phenom CPU's that were released to OEM's for AM4 and some of the very early Ryzen 1 CPU's. Also some features were removed and the BIOS interface streamlined to an extent.

Anyway, enough of the digression, why do all the Intel owners want to change the subject and dodge the subject at hand.

 

[Solid State Brain]

Funny how the people defending intel conveniently ignore the comments intel made publicly about the fact that maxed out power limits and all the shenanigans the board partners were doing are "within spec" only to backtrack now and blame the board partners.

Atleast AMD didn't stoop that low. Intel reeks of desperation now and I guess the defensive attitude stems from that. How far they've fallen..

Increased power limits are within specs only if thermal and electrical specs are maintained.

Anyway, motherboards having silly default settings isn't a new thing. A few years ago I had an Aorus B560 motherboard mated to an i9-11900 that wouldn't be stable under semi-default settings (with just power limits increased over the 65W default. Not much else to tweak on a B-series motherboard and non-K CPU), causing errors or bluescreens during intensive benchmarks. At first I thought it was the CPU, but eventually I found it was just a matter of voltage sagging too much under load. It turned out that the motherboard had rather weak default loadline and LLC settings, that while on one hand mitigated thermal throttling (to some extent), on another caused stability issues under load.

 

[RGAFL]

Intel must be hating Epic at the moment. Unreal Engine 5 really has started to open a can of worms.

 

[Vya Domus]

Ah yes, everyone demanding support for Zen 3 was just dying to retain the ability to use those masterpieces of superior AMD engineering, those incredibly high performance, cherished Excavator chips...

Not but you understand why it wasn't straight forward to add support for those CPUs. And this was a problem only on the boards that had 32MB or whatever amount was problematic, which wasn't all of them, so it wasn't like this was some mastermind planned obsolesces conspiracy to get you to buy newer boards, I doubt AMD even considered this would become a problem.

 

[Tek-Check]

Every Arrow Z890 motherboard will have to run Intel Baseline profile as out-of-the-box experience. Any enhancements will need to be enabled voluntarily and this should be clearly said to buyers. There is nothing wrong with running enhanced profiles, but this needs to be an add-on feature to be explicitly enabled by users, if they choose so.

As PC World debate on youtube says: "Mummy and daddy need to come in to clean this mess once and for all".

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Once the door was opened to virtually unlimited power settings and CPUs and GPUs that basically overclocked themselves, we’d eventually end up with issues like this. Motherboard makers were basically encouraged to run up to the edge of the cliff and rely on the chip to throttle itself. I’d be curious to see a graph of actual max power consumption over time/generation. It was a desperate grab for more performance, and now that “engineering solution” has been played out.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Once the door was opened to virtually unlimited power settings and CPUs and GPUs that basically overclocked themselves, we’d eventually end up with issues like this. Motherboard makers were basically encouraged to run up to the edge of the cliff and rely on the chip to throttle itself. I’d be curious to see a graph of actual max power consumption over time/generation. It was a desperate grab for more performance, and now that “engineering solution” has been played out.

Agreed. Call me old-fashioned, but I very much preferred the old days of static clocks instead of "dynamic boosts".

 

[AnonymousGuy767]

I had a 14900K fail for the exact scenario described. I wasn't overclocking really: just maxing out the power limits, setting XMP and that's it. But I'm on full custom watercooling and my CPU idles most of the time so my theory is that there's more going on than just the power limits which I wasn't hitting 99.99% of the time anyways. I think that it's tied to the voltage because I would see *really f-ing high* voltages at idle like 1.6V in the BIOS. I wouldn't be surprised if some boards "Auto" voltage when you increase the power is like "oh sweet lemme do max loadline and +.2V baseline". Now I'm using a 14700 where it idles at 1.27V with everything on Auto and the power limit maxed....like it's following a real VF curve instead of doing whatever Asus figures to do on a K series.

So unless this Intel Baseline bios update also fixes the VF curve to not slam high voltages in at idle...the new profile wouldn't have prevented my 14900K from degrading even if it existed from day 1. What Intel seems to be fixing is the scenario of "I set everything to Auto and my CPU overheats".

 

[Crackong]

Increased power limits are within specs only if thermal and electrical specs are maintained.

Regarding the 'electrical spec' part
I must say, judging from the open Intel spec document I've shown at #157

Only maximum values were specified by Intel.
While 'Capping maximum values' sounds okay.
Not all values are equal, certain things get ugly when they are ' too low', such as current / resistance / load line calibration

The problem (random crash in testing/UE5) we are facing right now seems to be caused by 'Not enough current / voltage during heavy workload'
Since the Intel document only specified the maximum current/voltage, which is 307A / 1.72V for a normal K SKU
No minimum values, nor typical values were supplied by Intel.
So the range is 0-307A / 0-1.72V

'Being too low' is actually...well.. 'Within Spec' .

Once the door was opened to virtually unlimited power settings and CPUs and GPUs that basically overclocked themselves, we’d eventually end up with issues like this. Motherboard makers were basically encouraged to run up to the edge of the cliff and rely on the chip to throttle itself. I’d be curious to see a graph of actual max power consumption over time/generation. It was a desperate grab for more performance, and now that “engineering solution” has been played out.

True.
Things get dirty when everyone wants the last bit of juice getting squeezed out-of-box.

Really missed those days when 20-30% even 50% overclocking headroom was possible.

 

[Solid State Brain]

Regarding the 'electrical spec' part
I must say, judging from the open Intel spec document I've shown at #157

Only maximum values were specified by Intel.
While 'Capping maximum values' sounds okay.
Not all values are equal, certain things get ugly when they are ' too low', such as current / resistance / load line calibration

The problem (random crash in testing/UE5) we are facing right now seems to be caused by 'Not enough current / voltage during heavy workload'
Since the Intel document only specified the maximum current/voltage, which is 307A / 1.72V for a normal K SKU
No minimum values, nor typical values were supplied by Intel.
So the range is 0-307A / 0-1.72V

'Being too low' is actually...well.. 'Within Spec' .

The CPU comes with a pre-programmed voltage curve at which it is supposed to be stable (with a certain margin for long-term drift) and intended to operate. If motherboard settings cannot supply the voltage that the CPU is requesting, then the CPU is not operating within specifications.

 

[Crackong]

The CPU comes with a pre-programmed voltage curve at which it is supposed to be stable (with a certain margin for long-term drift) and intended to operate. If motherboard settings cannot supply the voltage that the CPU is requesting, then the CPU is not operating within specifications.

View attachment 345831

Yes.
But noted the word 'Individually calibrated' .
It means each CPU has their own voltage/frequency table.
That means a 'low bin' CPU could have voltage shots to the moon to achieve the said frequency.

It is quite unfair to ask the MB vendors to predict what a 'low bin' CPU would behave.
Since the lack of information supplied by Intel, and they have to try & error all those blank values, with Intel encouraging them to make LLC lower (lower voltage).
When low LLC meets 'low bin' CPU, bad things happened.

 

[Solid State Brain]

The voltage/frequency table is something that the motherboard firmware is aware of and can (should) compensate for.

Of course, the existence of high/low bins implies that some CPUs will be able to boost longer before thermal throttling, some less. However, it isn't the motherboard manufacturer's job to make things "fair" for unlucky customers by lowering voltages (at the cost of instabilities).

 

[Crackong]

The voltage/frequency table is something that the motherboard firmware is aware of and can (should) compensate for.

True, LLC should compensate that.

Then it all comes back to the paragraph I pointed out at #157
Intel themselves encouraged the MB vendors to use 'Superior board design with lower LLC to achieve better performance'
That's why I said it is a 50/50 blame on Intel/MB vendor.

It is quite obvious that Intel wants the MB vendor to use lower LLC and show better performance.
And the MB vendors get more sales when CPU performed better on their boards.
Technically they all act within-spec, until some low bin CPUs come in......

Maybe, MB vendors could have tested a few more hundred CPU to cook up a better LLC table.
Maybe, Intel themselves shouldn't allow such low bin CPU to be branded as i9 in a first place.

 

[Solid State Brain]

You don't necessarily need an electrically less droopy LLC to compensate. On Intel CPUs there's an operating parameter called "AC loadline" which allows to adjust voltages up with current to make up for Vdroop. On some motherboards it tends to be high by default, causing CPUs to run hot (and at higher voltages than intended), on others it's too low by default, causing instabilities.

In principle it could be configured so that the voltage supplied under load is exactly the one requested by the CPU, but there's apparently barely any testing going on by motherboard manufacturers, with the same settings being used across different models having different voltage regulators and electrical characteristics.

 

[Crackong]

You don't necessarily need an electrically less droopy LLC to compensate. On Intel CPUs there's an operating parameter called "AC loadline" which allows to adjust voltages up with current to make up for Vdroop. On some motherboards it tends to be high by default, causing CPUs to run hot (and at higher voltages than intended), on others it's too low by default, causing instabilities.

AC (or DC) loadline is exactly where the problem was.
In Intel spec document it is described that MB vendor should measure and set their own values. (Since no such value is provided by Intel)
And some 'Superior' / 'Improve' buzzword are also presented to encourage MB vendors to use a 'Shallower AC load line' design for more performance.
So naturally, MB vendors would favor a low AC load line default setting.

In principle it could be configured so that the voltage supplied under load is exactly the one requested by the CPU, but there's apparently barely any testing going on by motherboard manufacturers, with the same settings being used across different models having different voltage regulators and electrical characteristics.

Since there is no reference value provided by Intel.
MB vendors had to cook up their own values, by testing the ES CPUs provided by Intel.
IDK how many they've tested.
But juding from the reality, it doesn't cover the whole silicon lottery spectrum.