by You may recall reports of Unreal-based games crashing when running on gaming PCs using high-end Intel processors towards the beginning of this year. As the problem became known around the world, things were serious enough for Intel to formally investigate the problem. That is still a work in progress but Intel has made an early statement on the matter, in which it is basically blaming motherboard manufacturers for having default settings in the BIOS / UEFI that allow the CPU to operate well beyond the recommended limits power and current.
Igor’s Lab reported the entire statement but the most significant is this comment from Intel: “600/700 series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery protections designed to limit processor exposure for sustained periods of high voltage and frequency.
Anyone who has bought an Intel-based motherboard in the last few years is probably already aware of this. For example, by default, Asus enables its Enhanced Multi-Core feature in the BIOS which simply sets the power and current limits to their maximum possible values.
Intel CPUs have two main power limits, PL1 and PL2, the idea behind them being that the first is the maximum power the chip can consume under ‘normal’ circumstances, while the second allows more to use energy, for a limited period. .
Take the Core i9 13900K. That has PL1 and PL2 of 125 and 253 W respectively, but stick with that in most Asus 600/700 series motherboards that have MCE enabled, and the processor is limited to 4095 W. The same is true for current – the chip is allowed to draw well over Intel’s recommended maximum value of 307 A. It’s over 100 A more than the ‘config Extreme’ limit of 400 A.
That particular CPU will never use that much power, but for the 13th and 14th Gen i9 models, the extremely high power and current limits – along with extremely high operating voltages – result. nor that a processor is unstable in demanding situations, for example. playing games. And it’s not just Asus that does this; ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, and others have BIOS defaults that ignore Intel’s recommended limits.
Asus responded to the reports by releasing a new BIOS for most of its Intel 600/700 series motherboard chipsets, which includes an ‘Intel Baseline Profile’ that pushes the PL2 and current limits to the recommended values. However, it sets the PL1 even higher than it should be. That’s not a problem for most Intel CPUs, provided they have decent coolers, but it’s an example of Intel saying one thing and a motherboard vendor doing something different.
Intel’s data for its 13th and 14th Generation Core processors clearly shows what the maximum limits are for everything, and contains statements such as “long-term reliability cannot be guaranteed in conditions above or below Upper / Minimum operating limits.” If the end user wants to push their hardware beyond these, that’s fine, but it should never be the case that one’s motherboard is default such a situation.
So is this all a case of Intel apparently being a victim of motherboard vendors doing whatever they want? No, not really.
Motherboard manufacturers have been setting the default BIOS values for Intel processors well outside the recommended values for quite some time now and I can’t imagine that Intel is not aware of this. In fact, there’s no way he could miss this because every time the giant releases a new CPU chip, the marketing material always contains benchmarks that compare the new chip to previous models, or AMD’s, which was tested. PC using a motherboard by Asus, ASRock, MSI, etc – he even has a dedicated web page for “Truth and Transparency” which clearly shows what motherboard the tests were done with.
Even if Intel forced its power and current limits before starting the test, it would be clear what the motherboard’s BIOS had defaulted to before it changed anything.
In other words, Intel has known about this for a long time and was happy to enjoy the results of such settings, ie chart-topping performance figures. But now, with customers and retailers complaining about games crashing and chips failing outright, Intel seems to want to point the finger at motherboard vendors. The reality is that both are to blame here.
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What needs to happen is that every Intel-based motherboard has a BIOS / UEFI that defaults to Intel’s current, power and voltage limits – not some version of them, but the exact values, across the board. The ability to change them should only be accessible through an optional menu that clearly warns the user of the potential dangers of changing them.
At the moment, what we’re getting are BIOS updates that, in some cases, only make this an option that one has to look for to enable.
As we review new motherboards, we’ll keep an eye out for the various limitations in the default BIOS to see if vendors are on board to keep your hardware safe or if they’re still pushing the limits to pick up those few extra points. . the performance charts.
