Intel has faced a string of unfortunate events ever since reports of instability in its Raptor Lake CPUs surfaced, damaging the company's reputation. However, things have taken a positive turn with the success of Lunar Lake, breaking the cycle of bad news. Additionally, Intel has identified the root cause of issues affecting its 13th and 14th Gen CPUs and released a new microcode update to address them.
In August, Intel issued its first round of microcode updates to mitigate problems with the 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors, but the investigation into the underlying cause continued. After months of thorough research, Intel has pinpointed the factors leading to what it calls "Vmin Shift Instability." According to Intel, the instability can be traced to four specific operating conditions, including motherboard power delivery exceeding Intel's guidelines, high voltages requested by the microcode algorithms, and elevated core voltages during idle or light usage periods.
To address these, Intel has rolled out microcode updates:
- 0x125 to fix the eTVB algorithm issue
- 0x129 to address high voltage requests
- 0x12B update, which combines the previous fixes and further reduces elevated voltage levels
A new BIOS update will soon be available to further mitigate the issues, and Intel assures users that no significant performance loss will occur after applying these patches.
While these updates can prevent the recurrence of the "Vmin Shift Instability," they won't fix CPUs already affected. Users experiencing issues are advised to contact Intel for a replacement under the extended warranty program, and after replacement, they should install the latest updates to avoid future problems.