Intel Definitively Claims Its Laptop Chips Aren't Crashing Because of That Voltage Thing

An anonymous reader shares a report: It's been a burning question for months -- are Intel's laptop chips susceptible to the same permanent damage that can potentially lay 24 different flagship desktop chips low? Today, Intel has finally confirmed: its 13th and 14th Gen laptop chips do not seem to have an instability issue. And the company claims they are definitely not affected by the too-high voltage issue, which it's now calling "Vmin Shift Instability." While Intel maintains that Vmin Shift Instability is not necessarily the root cause or only cause of the crashes -- it's still investigating -- Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford now tells The Verge that laptop chips basically aren't affected at all.

"It's been a burning question for months"

[SeaFox]

I see what you did there.

Re:

[war4peace]

I don't.
It was never a matter of overheating.

Re:

[Rujiel]

Maybe you could say the oxdization issues have.. sucked all the air out of the room?

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[war4peace]

"Kept everyone out of breath for months"
"After months of suffocating silence"

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[Z00L00K]

The method is to continue to deny until it's impossible to deny.

Intel is in trouble, but they have to avoid consequences worse than the FDIV bug.

I can confirm it!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I connected a few Intel CPUs to the mains and they immedately smoked. That voltage thing really is a thing! Shame on Intel!

A bit of background

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

I read an article this week saying that Intel are extending the guarantee for specific generation 13 and 14 processors from two years to five. There was something in there about a second problem (oxidation of copper after a few months use) and they only got that cleared up at the start of 2024. The processors with the extended guarantee are the boxed versions of:
Core i5-13600K(F)/14600K(F)
Core i7-13700/14700(K)(KF)(F)
Core i9-13900K/14900K(K)(KF)(F)(KS) "Raptor Lake"
Apart from the oxidation, the other problems were:
- processors running with power limits set too high (Intel had not bothered to mandate limits)
- an error in the "Turbofunction Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB)
- A bug in the microcode also causing processors to burn out.

I had not known about the eTVB problem but the others had been known for a while now.
This was in the German magazine C't (page 39 of issue 19) for those who also read it, and obviously the article is in German.

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[JackAxe]

My friend bought a 13900k about a year ago, hopefully he was lucky enough that he got a batch that doesn't have the oxidation issue -- which only effects the 13 gens. But even if that is the case, his voltage has been set to 1.4+ volts from day one, but his system is stable and hopefully it stays that way.

I bought a 14700k based on YouTuber Jazy2Cents' recommendations over a AMD 7900x, after he released a video of all the problems he was having with this 7950x3D and unreliable memory, and about the 3D s

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[st33ld13hl]

That's not from msmash. It's from the article's title (the verge)

Isn't that worse?

[Baron_Yam]

Instead of "We identified an issue" it is instead, "Sure, they're unreliable, but at least we can't figure out why!"

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[Deal In One]

Isn't that basically what Boeing said about the thrusters in Starliner?

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[Baron_Yam]

In this one specific instance, I'd have some sympathy for Boeing (if they weren't already systemic fuck-ups otherwise). Those thrusters are in orbit, it's not like they have an engineer handy to do a teardown on site and see what went wrong.

As they say, "space is hard".

On the other hand, Intel knows the issue isn't limited to a single chip, and they can reproduce the failure conditions in a lab any time and as often as they need to investigate. It's a much bigger embarrassment for them if they can't figur

Glad I won't have to worry

[JamesTRexx]

I'v been only using laptops for almost two decades now for daily and gaming use, so I'm glad I won't have to worry about what Intel CPU is in a used laptop when I buy a replacement in a few years or so (if I find no suitable AMD based laptop).

My empirical data backs that up

[paul_engr]

I've had my hands on at least a dozen 13th gen workstation laptops with mostly 13900H's and have seen zero defects. I sure am glad I went with a 5800X3D rather than a 13th gen intel desktop cpu for my recent gaming rig build.

Re: My empirical data backs that up

[paul_engr]

To be fair, I had the AM4 mobo and went for the best cpu i could get for it rather than go buy a new intel board. My friend built a 139xx whatever at the same time and his shit has been flaky

Obfuscstion

[DrMrLordX]

Most mobile 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs are actually rebadged Alder Lake that never had oxidation or degradation problems in the first place.

Re:

[Penguinoflight]

Rebranding aka lying was my understanding of the 65w non-k "13th gen" processors as well, but Intel is now confirming that they are broken while none of the Alderlake have been identified as such. I suppose it's possible that they truly were made with the raptorlake process but intel artificially limited their memory performance to mimic the older processors.

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[DrMrLordX]

Some of the desktop 65w tdp chips are raptor lake. Some of them are not.

Meanwhile you can get a 12900ks or k with no degradation problems out of the box.