The end of the nightmare? Intel says it has resolved issues with its Raptor Lake chips

Intel claims to have resolved instability issues caused by its 13th and 14th generation chips (“Raptor Lake”) in desktop CPUs. The company added that it has provided four sets of mitigations related to this issue.

The company identified the cause of the crashes and instability as “Vmin Shift Instability”. In short: Intel chips and associated motherboards were requiring excessive voltage, which damaged parts of those chips, causing them to become prematurely obsolete.

Intel believes that the latest BIOS updates – which have already begun to be available – can prevent premature aging of the chips. But he stresses that they will not solve problems in already damaged processors.

“To be clear, BIOS and microcode updates will not fix processors that are already experiencing instability due to the Vmin shift,” Intel spokesman Mark Anthony Ramirez wrote (via Edge).

“Customers experiencing instability on their 13th and 14th generation desktop processors should contact their Intel representative, system manufacturer, or place of purchase,” Ramirez adds.

Another important point: Intel guarantees that the Vmin Shift Instability issue does not affect its laptop chipsets and will not affect future desktop chipsets it launches.

Out of curiosity:

• So far, Intel has not publicly disclosed the specific batches or serial numbers of chips that were affected by oxidation during manufacturing (which the company says it has also resolved);
• The company does not offer a diagnostic tool to detect premature aging of chips.

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AMD or Intel? Sony is choosing the processor that will house its PS6

AMD has won the dispute against Intel to supply the processor for the PS6, Sony’s next-generation video game console, as Reuters revealed in mid-September.

PS5 and PS5 Pro processors from AMD. But this does not mean that the company will supply chips for the next generation. There was a dispute in 2022. A loss could cost Intel billions of dollars.