Serious stability issues that emerged in early February continue to plague Intel’s latest chips, hampering its efforts to maintain the leadership position in the chipmaking industry it helped create.
Intel recently announced that it had discovered the cause of the problem — and is planning a microcode patch to fix it — but the damage to the company’s reputation is harder to cover up. One recent report revealed that Intel’s 13th-generation Raptor Lake processors have a return rate four times higher than previous-generation processors. Meanwhile, 14th-generation Raptor Lake Refresh chips also have a return rate three times higher than 12th-generation Alder Lake processors — suggesting that the current problems Intel is grappling with could turn into a business nightmare.
Just starting out? Here’s a quick history of the problem:
July 22nd: Intel has announced that it has found the cause of the crash issues plaguing its processors. The company will release a microcode update to fix the issues by mid-August, seemingly ending a long-running saga that began when sporadic reports of bugs causing processor crashes first appeared in December 2022 and reached a head by the end of 2023.
July 16: Amid growing frustration over Intel’s inability to resolve Raptor Lake instability issues, game development studio Alderon’s Games revealed on its website that the company was having ongoing issues with Intel’s 13th and 14th generation processors in its servers, development systems, and customer gaming PCs. The issues became so widespread that Alderon Games publicly stated that Intel was selling faulty 13th and 14th generation processors.
June 14: There were reports that Intel had identified the cause of the issue. Unfortunately, that was not the case. “Contrary to recent media reports, Intel has not confirmed the cause and continues to investigate user reports of instability issues with unlocked 13th and 14th Generation Intel Core desktop processors (K/KF/KS) with its partners,” Intel said in a statement to Tom’s Hardware.
April 30: Intel has released guidance for its motherboard partners regarding default BIOS settings in an effort to mitigate stability issues experienced by some 13th and 14th generation Core i9 owners. The novel guidance includes recommended settings that motherboard manufacturers should exploit to improve stability. Intel stated that the cause of the stability issues has not been investigated. The company was also careful not to blame its motherboard partners for the aforementioned instability issues.
April 27: The message was originally intended for motherboard manufacturers to clarify ongoing issues that are likely the result of motherboard manufacturers racing to become the “fastest” manufacturers by using overly aggressive voltages that allow for higher clock speeds.
April 20: Asus was the first to release a BIOS patch adding a setting aptly named “Intel Baseline Profile,” which switches the motherboard’s default settings to those recommended by Intel. This was in response to widespread crashes and another instability issue with some games using Unreal Engine 5, precisely when it initializes shaders during a loading screen. However, this issue has not been resolved.
February 23: A growing number of Core i9-13900K and Core i7-13700K users have reported crashes in some of the latest games, usually in conjunction with an out-of-video-memory error. This isn’t just a random end-user issue: a GPU reviewer at Tom’s Hardware has personally experienced the issue.
“Intel is aware of reports that unlocked 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core desktop processors are having issues with certain workloads,” the company told us. “We are working with our partners to investigate the reported issues.”
