They aren’t over clocking / under clocking anything with the fix. The chip was just straight up requesting more voltage than it actually needed, this didn’t give any benefit and was probably an issue even without the damage it causes, due to extra heat generated.
Giving a CPU more voltage is just what overclocking is. Considering that most of these modern CPUs from both AMD and Intel have already been designed to start clocking until it reaches a high enough temp to start thermally throttling, it’s likely that there was a misstep in setting this threshold and the CPU doesn’t know when to quit until it kills itself. In the process it is undoubtedly gaining more performance than it otherwise would, but probably not by much, considering a lot of the high end CPUs already have really high thresholds, some even at 90 or 100 C.
If you actually knew anything you’d know that overclockers tend to manually reduce the voltage as they increase the clock speeds to improve stability, this only works up to a point, but clearly shows voltage does not directly influence clock speed.
If you give a chip more voltage, its transistors will switch faster, but they’ll degrade faster. Ideally, you want just barely enough voltage that everything’s reliably finished switching and all signals have propagated before it’s time for the next clock cycle, as that makes everything work and last as long as possible. When the degradation happens, at first it means things need more voltage to reach the same speed, and then they totally stop working. A little degradation over time is normal, but it’s not unreasonable to hope that it’ll take ten or twenty years to build up enough that a chip stops working at its default voltage.
The microcode bug they’ve identified and are fixing applies too much voltage to part of the chip under specific circumstances, so if an individual chip hasn’t experienced those circumstances very often, it could well have built up some degradation, but not enough that it’s stopped working reliably yet. That could range from having burned through a couple of days of lifetime, which won’t get noticed, to having a chip that’s in the condition you’d expect it to be in if it was twenty years old, which still could pass tests, but might keel over and die at any moment.
If they’re not doing a mass recall, and can’t come up with a test that says how affected an individual CPU has been without needing to be so damaged that it’s no longer reliable, then they’re betting that most people’s chips aren’t damaged enough to die until the after warranty expires. There’s still a big difference between the three years of their warranty and the ten to twenty years that people expect a CPU to function for, and customers whose parts die after thirty-seven months will lose out compared to what they thought they were buying.
For what it’s worth my i9-13900 was experiencing serious instability issues. Disabling turbo helped a lot but Intel offered to replace it under warranty and I’m going through that now. Customer support on the issue seems to be pretty good from my experience.
deleted by creator
They cant even commit to offering RMAs, period. They keep using vague, cant-be-used-against-me-in-a-court-of-law language.
That will surely earn trust with the public and result in brand loyalty, right???
Oh you mean they’re going to underclock the expensive new shit I bought and have it underperform to fix their fuck up?
What an unacceptable solution.
They aren’t over clocking / under clocking anything with the fix. The chip was just straight up requesting more voltage than it actually needed, this didn’t give any benefit and was probably an issue even without the damage it causes, due to extra heat generated.
Giving a CPU more voltage is just what overclocking is. Considering that most of these modern CPUs from both AMD and Intel have already been designed to start clocking until it reaches a high enough temp to start thermally throttling, it’s likely that there was a misstep in setting this threshold and the CPU doesn’t know when to quit until it kills itself. In the process it is undoubtedly gaining more performance than it otherwise would, but probably not by much, considering a lot of the high end CPUs already have really high thresholds, some even at 90 or 100 C.
If you actually knew anything you’d know that overclockers tend to manually reduce the voltage as they increase the clock speeds to improve stability, this only works up to a point, but clearly shows voltage does not directly influence clock speed.
Ah, got me with a reverse gish gallop. Now I’m an idiot, oh no…
If you give a chip more voltage, its transistors will switch faster, but they’ll degrade faster. Ideally, you want just barely enough voltage that everything’s reliably finished switching and all signals have propagated before it’s time for the next clock cycle, as that makes everything work and last as long as possible. When the degradation happens, at first it means things need more voltage to reach the same speed, and then they totally stop working. A little degradation over time is normal, but it’s not unreasonable to hope that it’ll take ten or twenty years to build up enough that a chip stops working at its default voltage.
The microcode bug they’ve identified and are fixing applies too much voltage to part of the chip under specific circumstances, so if an individual chip hasn’t experienced those circumstances very often, it could well have built up some degradation, but not enough that it’s stopped working reliably yet. That could range from having burned through a couple of days of lifetime, which won’t get noticed, to having a chip that’s in the condition you’d expect it to be in if it was twenty years old, which still could pass tests, but might keel over and die at any moment.
If they’re not doing a mass recall, and can’t come up with a test that says how affected an individual CPU has been without needing to be so damaged that it’s no longer reliable, then they’re betting that most people’s chips aren’t damaged enough to die until the after warranty expires. There’s still a big difference between the three years of their warranty and the ten to twenty years that people expect a CPU to function for, and customers whose parts die after thirty-seven months will lose out compared to what they thought they were buying.
No refunds for the fried ones should be all you need to see about hwp they “handle” this.
deleted by creator
For what it’s worth my i9-13900 was experiencing serious instability issues. Disabling turbo helped a lot but Intel offered to replace it under warranty and I’m going through that now. Customer support on the issue seems to be pretty good from my experience.