Intel recently announced that it had discovered the root cause of the instability problem affecting its 13th and 14th generation Core i9s. However, if the news sounds encouraging, various reports indicate that the situation is more complex than it seems. According to Igor’s Lab, Intel hasn’t told the whole truth.
Intel hasn’t told the whole story!
While the blueprints are well on the way to completion, it’s clear that not everything has been said. The instability problem is linked to excessive processor voltages. It would seem that excessively high minimum operating voltages eventually damage CPUs. The fault lies in over-aggressive settings applied by default to the processors. At least, this is what emerges from the latest analyses carried out by the blue team on the defective processors returned.
Apparently, these high voltages are also applied to the processor even in idle mode. According to Igor’s Lab, the mid-August patch will cap the voltages demanded by the VID at 1.55V. Normally, this should not have a significant impact on performance.
At Tom’s Hardware, we read that “high voltages may be sporadically applied to the CPU exiting low-power state in order to process background operations before returning to a low-power state”.
However, this may not be the real cause of the problem… Or at least not the only cause. As it stands, the company is continuing its research work, in particular to ensure that the new patch will indeed resolve the problem. To find out, you’ll just have to wait until the patch is deployed, scheduled for mid-August! This is not Intel’s first attempt, and a first patch has already been deployed.
