Intel processors crashing Unreal engine games (and others)

[coercitiv]

Oh dear, I completely forgot about this: uncore voltage changes after enabling XMP. Mobo makers have this wonderful habit of pushing uncore voltages proportionately with DDR speed when activating XMP. A few years ago I installed a DDR4 4400 kit on my MSI Z370 board, and was surprised to see SA voltage pushed way higher than it needed to be. The reason is simple, they want to ensure the boards can run extreme DDR speeds at the click of a button.

It would be both comical and very sad if uncore voltage was a second vector that contributes to system instability through degradation. Unfortunately there's no way we can realistically check on this, though it could pottentially explain why people are having such a hard time isolating the cause. As a side-note, SA voltage is locked on non-K CPUs (one of the reasons one does not buy non-K CPUs for gaming these days, since locked SA voltage means XMP memory is harder to make work).

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I wouldn't need to bother with faster RAM if Intel had simply given the K CPUs ample cache.

Aussie Steve just tested the effect of cache size -

It didn't do much to help. It does however make me wonder if the 14900K had say, 96MB of L3, if the single digit gains in some games would have turned into 20% or more. As only having a 12MB difference between 6 and 9 series is not exactly huge.

 

[igor_kavinski]

As only having a 12MB difference between 6 and 9 series is not exactly huge.

Also, when there are 8 cores available, we also need to take into account the fact that the L2 cache of the extra two or four cores vs. 4-cores only CPUs may be confounding results.

My testing methodology would be 12700K vs. 13700K vs. 14700K, all with E-cores disabled.

12700K 8 P-cores enabled (8*1.25=10MB L2)

13700K 5 P-cores enabled (5*2=10MB L2)

14700K 5 P-cores enabled (5*2=10MB L2)

Disable Turbo boost and make the 13/14th gen i7s run at the max frequency possible for 12700K.

Yes, the 13/14th gen would be suffering due to fewer cores but would the increased L3 cache be able to help them get ahead?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

A couple of other commenters from that black bird vid -

commenter 1

Well we'll see what the new bios set (MSI already have some out). I think the intent is to enable CEP like the guidance shows and raise AC_LL which is necessary to keep CEP from causing clock stretching. BTW I just sent a 14900ks to Intel on an RMA. It wasn't remotely stable with unlocked limits. It needed 253w/307a to be able to not crash during UE5 shader comp. I doubt just limiting to 90C would have stabilized it. 5.9 p-core was wildly unstable.

commenter 2

I set my LLC to extreme and AC/DC load line to 12 and 12, with a 14700k and Z790 aorus master x, also CEP on with TVB options both enabled. And vcore doesn’t go above 1.45 ever now at 5.6. However you can’t undervolt with CEP or it ruins stability. Setting a fixed vcore isn’t good either with this architecture as ring/ecore/pcores are on the same voltage rail. If you do set voltages manually you have to set a very high value or you risk undershoot regardless of LLC setting, that can either cause clock stretching or straight up crashes. The only way I got my chip to consistently not crash was CEP on and TVB at stock speeds. At this rate I’ll probably move to AMD too and sell this POS platform.
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What a disaster.

 

[lakedude]

I see this as too much of a good thing.

Back in the day they typically sold CPUs with a ton of OC headroom. Who could forget the Cel 300A with on die cache which could generally run at 450? That made OCing fun now! 150%!

For a while there seemed like they tried to lock things down and not allow so much fiddling.

Over time they saw the light and sold unlocked parts and over clocking got easier and easier as automated settings evolved.

The downsides are that now chips are being sold with basically zero headroom (negative headroom?) and the stinking things are so complicated that they are a nightmare to tweek.

They have simply gone too far.

Same is true with cars. My favorite car had fantastic automatic controls but it let you have full manual control if for some reason you didn't like what the car did automatically. Now you need a stinking computer's help to turn on heated seats and you gotta pay extra to turn on the heated seats you already have! I would hot wire that $&@# so fast...

 

[igor_kavinski]

It's these business executives with not even basic understanding of technical matters in most cases who are running the show in almost every instance of a crappy and ill-conceived product. I've noticed that most techies are not too argumentative in meetings. They have better things to do than teach the counterparty or their superiors about the right way to approach something and even if they try, 9 times out of 10 they will be shot down in a meeting in front of everyone unless it's a workplace where people are hired based on their competency and knowledge rather than their powerpoint and BSing skills.

 

[DrMrLordX]

What a disaster.

That common voltage rail is really biting them in the behind. They had the option to put the e-cores on a separate voltage rail but chose not to utilize that feature on desktop Raptor Lake. Big mistake!

 

[Thibsie]

Yeah, at that Abut mobo which allowed to use 2x Celeron 300A@450 before Intel disabled multiproc with Celerons.

 

[lakedude]

Yeah, at that Abut mobo which allowed to use 2x Celeron 300A@450 before Intel disabled multiproc with Celerons.

Yeah, I had an Abit 440 "BX" MB. Lasted 3 generations of CPUs with a slot adapter.

I think it was pushing nearly 1GHz by the EOL.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Yeah, at that Abut mobo which allowed to use 2x Celeron 300A@450 before Intel disabled multiproc with Celerons.

Yup good old Abut.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yeah, I had an Abit 440 "BX" MB. Lasted 3 generations of CPUs with a slot adapter.

Mine was a PC Partner 440BX that could clock a Celeron 700 Mhz to 1050 MHz using SoftFSB utility whenever I wanted. It was dang stable too but did require an extra fan blowing on it to prevent the system from locking up due to excess heat.

 

[Ranulf]

It's these business executives with not even basic understanding of technical matters in most cases who are running the show in almost every instance of a crappy and ill-conceived product. I've noticed that most techies are not too argumentative in meetings. They have better things to do than teach the counterparty or their superiors about the right way to approach something and even if they try, 9 times out of 10 they will be shot down in a meeting in front of everyone unless it's a workplace where people are hired based on their competency and knowledge rather than their powerpoint and BSing skills.

I think much of it is not understanding ones role, power in the position they have and the requirements needed to run things. This is why you often should have managers that see both sides of the equation. The CEO really only cares if the tech will give them the quarterly profits they need and marketing buzz. The Tech side does not understand all the financial requirements and responsibilities involved in running a company.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Asus is rolling out the new bios for some of the models. Look at how many commenters are having the crashing issues. ☠️ - r/Intel thread

 

[coercitiv]

Now that June has officially started, I would surely like to see that public statement Intel had prepared for the end of May. I guess from their PoV the mail they sent to the press with the correction on Intel Baseline Profile is supposed to be it?

 

[DrMrLordX]

Now that June has officially started, I would surely like to see that public statement Intel had prepared for the end of May. I guess from their PoV the mail they sent to the press with the correction on Intel Baseline Profile is supposed to be it?

May? Of which year?

 

[Thunder 57]

Now that June has officially started, I would surely like to see that public statement Intel had prepared for the end of May. I guess from their PoV the mail they sent to the press with the correction on Intel Baseline Profile is supposed to be it?

Yup, end of May they said. Buffoons.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Now that June has officially started, I would surely like to see that public statement Intel had prepared for the end of May. I guess from their PoV the mail they sent to the press with the correction on Intel Baseline Profile is supposed to be it?

It is a savvy play. Don't draw any more attention from the press than this has already gotten. And judging by many of the comments I've read by owners on that sub, there is a lot of simping, and even more Stockholm Syndrome.

If my game was crashing until I lowered the clocks significantly on a flagship CPU, I'd be sending it back pronto, selling the replacement and board, and avoiding their hardware for a few years minimum. I did that with AMD GPUs after the miserable experience I had with my pre-ordered Sapphire RX 5700XT. I bought 3 NIB RTX cards from 2 gens, before I even thought about buying Radeon again.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

More horror stories about the bad CPUs. This time from India mostly -

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1cw00dm/intel_rma_nightmare_a_customers_frustration_with

One dude is on the third one. At what point do you give up? LOLZ

They even compile lists of the games that crash on them. It's a copium den in there. -

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1cs0bly/what_games_cause_i9_instability

 

[igor_kavinski]

Asus is rolling out the new bios for some of the models. Look at how many commenters are having the crashing issues. ☠️ - r/Intel thread

That thread is very enlightening on how people are using different workloads to reproduce the issue. Forget the K CPUs for a moment and just look at how KS owners have to downclock their P-cores to avoid crashes. This is not the CPU they paid for!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

TLDW:

HUB got confirmation it is CPU degradation.
Board partners are not happy with Intel, the treatment they are getting, and lack of clear guidance.
Intel is trying to sweep this under the rug. It seems to be working. Attention spans are short...squirrel!
You need to watch the part about Intel pulling shenanigans over RMAs yourself.

 

[KompuKare]

Advice to those who like to buy used:
Avoid recent Intel K CPUs.
And avoid the Nvidia RTC 4090 too.
Unless you really really like gambling!

 

[Thunder 57]

Advice to those who like to buy used:
Avoid recent Intel K CPUs.
And avoid the Nvidia RTC 4090 too.
Unless you really really like gambling!

IMHO used these days is almost never worth it. You just don't see the savings you used to as people upgrade less frequently now.

 

[zir_blazer]

Board partners are not happy with Intel, the treatment they are getting, and lack of clear guidance.

I still insist that absolutely no one knowns how to use the Intel VRTT thing, which is what should give the AC_LL (Thus DC_LL) defaults for the board getting tested. Here is the tool in action.
You need to use that so that you can tell the BIOS developers what are the damn values you need to use as default for AC_LL/DC_LL. Absolutely no one seems to get this right, and I'm at the point where I would want VERY authoritative information coming from Intel about how to proceed. I think I already mentioned here that I have fought about this topic since more than a year ago, not sure if already two. At least now everyone acknowledges that there are loose things about this topic.

 

[igor_kavinski]

At least now everyone acknowledges that there are loose things about this topic.

Found this where you also posted about it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/1co9d3v/rambling_about_the_new_intel_13th14th_gen_intel

Looks like someone in that thread is right about the mobo companies messing with consumer mobo settings. Look here: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=W680D4U-2L2T/G5#Download



So after 14th gen support, there is no new BIOS, even though their Z790 mobos have beta BIOS available to fix the 14th gen stability issue. This means their workstation mobos were released with "correct" settings from the beginning and there's nothing to fix there.

WOW. Maybe the mobo makers deserve Intel throwing them under the bus...

 

[KompuKare]

WOW. Maybe the mobo makers deserve Intel throwing them under the bus...

Maybe.

Except that Intel PR and Intel Technical Marketing must be 100% aware that without all this P1=P2 and similar, that Alder Lake and Raptor Lake would never have won many benchmarks, and without the halo effect* all those 12/13/14th gen parts would have sold very poorly.

A company of Intel's size with as many engineers as they have?

That nobody internally knew what was going and that is all was asking for trouble and hardware failure?

That I find very very hard to believe.

Anyway forgot to say this earlier, but kudos to Epic to actually CRC their decompression. Since consumer motherboards don't have ECC memory (and would that even catch the CPU making a mistake?) then CRC'ing stuff is a really important thing. I assume the likes of 7zip use different routines/code path/instruction sets which do not experience this instability.

*for those who really did not care at all for perf/watt which was always really poor.