Intel tells mobo makers to go easy on the BIOS settings amid CPU instability reports

Intel is reportedly telling motherboard manufacturers to use its recommended BIOS settings by default to stop CPU instability issues with 13th and 14th Generation chips. "Intel requests system and motherboard manufacturers to provide end users with a default BIOS profile that matches Intel recommended settings," Intel said in …

[martinusher]

Pushing the envelope

My son was experiencing issues with his (gaming) PC recently and it was interesting watching all the chatter back and forth between support, various forums and so on. I, in my true identity as a "person who spent quite a bit of a lifetime designing logic" just dismissed the problem as "you need to turn the clock speed down a bit" but in my other identity as a parent I knew nothing and so needed to be ignored.

Needless to say, after a couple of weeks messing around the solution was triumphantly announced -- clock speed needed adjusting.

Its really difficult to explain to the masses (!) the statistical nature of logic, how you're not working with gates and logic levels but something that's much more organic (analog?) when you run it near the edge. Normally everyone keeps timing windows conservative so users don't experience weirdness but in the world of competitive motherboards there's a tendency to turn the wick up until things break and then just back it off a bit. It "kinda, sorta" works but isn't really a viable strategy. Things won't necessarily just break but there will be strange and random system errors that will point the finger at all matter of irrelevant components (like the son's failure manifest itself as a memory bank problem).

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: Pushing the envelope

Even nVidia had to come out with a statement saying... it's not us... It's intels fault

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Pushing the envelope

Organalog?

There's a reason for those data sheet timing diagrams...

[The Dogs Meevonks]

I've been following this via a few techtubers I follow... The blame lies squarely with intel on this one... they greenlit the board partners to basically do what they wanted to push the CPU's beyond spec whilst making it seem like it was the 'deffault' settings... and they did so purely to be able to reclaim ground they were losing to AMD Ryzen CPU's.

But over time... normal silicon degradation has rendered them unstable... So there was no choice but to try and blame board partners for pushing beyond the intel defaults.... because intel classes even using XMP profiles as overclocking... Seriously, a few years back they tried denying warranty claims by asking consumers making claims if they used XMP... and people who said yes, had their warranty denied. Loads of people advising consumers to just say 'what's that' if asked.

So now... the avg CPU that has to be default to the 'real' defaults instead of the overclocked defaults... has lost... what... about 10% of the performance they thought they had running it at those previous defaults?

My days of overclocking are long gone... the days of getting 30-40% more out of a CPU have been dead for a decade or more. My old T-Bird 1.2Ghz that ran around 1.57Ghz, or my Phenom II 955 3.2ghz that ran at 3.8ghz for years. Or evn the old AMD Barton core 2500 that a simple FSB bump from 166mhz to 200mhz turned it into a 3200 CPU

OK... I'm old and I miss those days of tweaking and fiddling with settings to get a few more frames... These days CPU's are so on the cutting edge that getting more out of them isn't worth it.

I spend more of my time underclocking and undervolting my stuff now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really suggesting that it's Intel's fault that systems get unstable if run outside of their published specifications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't enable

the 'Ludicrous Speed' setting.

[Ianab]

Re: Don't enable

Problem is that the Mobo makers made Ludicrous Speed the default.

Default should be what the chip makers guarantees to chip to run at. If you as the end user wants to tweak things up from there, that's on you.

With older systems, the first thing you did for weird problems was reset the BIOS to defaults. But if the defaults are flaky....

[Anonymous Coward]

4096w

4096w is not a Motherboard it’s a radiator.

[Roland6]

Re: 4096w

I think there is a lack of information and thus understanding on this.

From my (limited) reading the figures MSI are citing are motherboard power draws within a 100 microsecond window. With graphics cards being permitted to draw up to x3 their normal power during this period: hence fit two top end Nvidia graphics cards and there may be times when your motherboard may attempt to draw more than 4096 watts….

The disabling of CEP seems to be more around running the CPU at a lower power level than normal (less heat) whilst operating it at a higher clock speed.

[Strangelove]

Re: 4096w

well for a transient overload lasting 100uS or less the energy is not coming all the way from the power supply - there is simply no time for the control loops in any normal voltage regulator to adapt and wind things up and down again in that sort of time frame.

So it all falls back to the reservoir of charge held locally in the form of decoupling capacitors, which as we know from the past is something to be cheaped out at your peril. (much like the tank on the toilet defines the available flush size, not the thickness of the supply pipe in the street or the municipal reservoir) and capacitors can degrade with heat and the age of the board. So in a sense it is very much analogue.

Mike