Yesterday morning, Intel posted a blog post regarding the infamous Vmin Shift Instability issue affecting 13th (Raptor Lake) and 14th (Raptor Lake Refresh) Generation Core processors, among the best CPUs.
Intel has confirmed that thanks to their new architecture, the company’s next-generation Core Ultra 200 Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake CPUs aren’t affected by the Vmin Shift Instability issue. Intel will announce Lunar Lake in September, while we still don’t have an official date for Arrow Lake. However, rumors point to October 17.
Alongside this new information, Intel advises “all users,” impacted or not, to upgrade their Intel motherboards to the latest firmware and utilize the Intel Default Settings recommendations for 13th and 14th Generation desktop CPUs.
Of course, the BIOS update recommendation aligns with the microcode patches pushed through BIOS updates from the various 13th and 14th Generation motherboard providers, which started rolling out earlier this month.
Meanwhile, Intel also lists (“confirms”) processors that are unaffected by these issues. Of course, this list includes all 12th Generation Alder Lake CPUs for desktops and laptops and all 13th and 14th Generation Core i3 and Core i5 (non-K) desktop models. Meanwhile, 13th and 14th Generation mobile CPUs, including the high-performance HX series, are unaffected. Finally, Intel claims these issues have affected neither Intel Xeon server and workstation CPUs nor Intel Core Ultra 100 (Meteor Lake) CPUs.
The truly disastrous scale of these CPU instabilities may or may not have permanently damaged Intel’s reputation, at least as the overall market leader providing the most stable product. At least newer Intel CPUs seem not impacted by the same issues, and existing processors can still be saved by the extended warranty period, if nothing else.
Don’t be concerned about the potential performance implications of these patches. The issue being fixed is a much greater concern, and fortunately, even early reports of the microcode patch performance seem to indicate only minor performance differences.
In the blog post, Intel stated that it will publish another update by the end of September. Therefore, it’s worth doubling back to see what new details the chipmaker will make public.
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