Intel faces possible class action lawsuit over crashing CPUs

[midian182]

In brief: Intel's problems keep racking up. In what should come as little surprise, the crashing and instability issues affecting its 13th- and 14th-gen processors have led to a law firm investigating the potential of a class action lawsuit against the company.

The issues affecting Intel Raptor Lake CPUs have been plaguing users for well over a year now. Intel initially suggested that overclocking and overvolting was to blame, suggesting users and OEMs return to the company's recommended baseline voltages.

In July, Intel finally identified the cause of the problems: a microcode algorithm error sent the wrong amount of voltage to CPUs. A patch is arriving this month, but it is mostly to prevent unaffected processors from being impacted. Those who have already suffered damage will have to replace their CPUs.

There have been signs that Intel could be facing legal action over the crisis: one retailer said Raptor Lake RMA returns are up four times compared to previous generations, a VFX studio says the failure rate for Raptor Lake is 50%, and we know the issues are also affecting all 65W and higher CPUs as well as the mainstream non-K models alongside their K/KF/KS variants.

Intel has pledged to replace all the damaged CPUs, which likely means having to deal with tens of millions of RMAs – an expensive process. Tom's Hardware reports that lawyers from Abington Cole + Ellery, a law firm specializing in class actions and intellectual property, want to make sure Intel lives up to its promise. One lawyer took to Reddit to ask for reports of Intel not honoring RMAs.

Intel says it has honored all RMA claims. The process requires a customer to send pictures of the CPU to the company. Once received, Intel will contact the owner for credit card information and ship a new CPU. It's then up to the owner to send their defective CPU to Intel, which will reverse the charge on the credit card. This RMA process comes with a $25 fee, but there's also the option to send Intel the defective CPU first and receive a new one later, without having to pay the fee.

There have been some reports of Intel refusing RMAs for CPUs, so the lawyers might find enough people to join the class action. But don't expect a lot of money if Intel goes to court and settles; AMD's $12.1 million settlement in the Bulldozer chips false advertising case led to average individual payouts of around $35 or less.

In other Intel news, the company is reportedly set to cut thousands of jobs globally as part of cost-cutting measures.

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Intel faces possible class action lawsuit over crashing CPUs

 

[HardReset]

<p>There have been some <a href="https://medium.com/hardware-times/a...ing-13900k-less-than-a-month-old-e358956651ff">reports</a> of Intel refusing RMAs for CPUs, so the lawyers might find enough people to join the class action. But don't expect a lot of money if Intel goes to court and settles; AMD's $12.1 million <a href="https://www.techspot.com/news/82381-amd-pay-buyers-bulldozer-piledriver-cpus-up-300.html">settlement</a> in the Bulldozer chips false advertising case led to average individual payouts of around $35 or less.</p>

Well, this Bulldozer incident was something AMD would have won on court because they didn't lie anything (FX-8350 IS 8-core CPU) and also CPU actually worked. AMD just calculated that settling is cheaper than continuing on court, both financially and reputation wise.

This Intel's case is much more serious, faulty CPU is simply fact, not an opinion like AMD Bulldozer case. Expect much larger payouts.

 

[Roboyt0]

Well, this Bulldozer incident was something AMD would have won on court because they didn't lie anything (FX-8350 IS 8-core CPU) and also CPU actually worked. AMD just calculated that settling is cheaper than continuing on court, both financially and reputation wise.

This Intel's case is much more serious, faulty CPU is simply fact, not an opinion like AMD Bulldozer case. Expect much larger payouts.

It was the matter of the definition of a core. In this instance it was how core resources were shared. The FX cores were more akin to 4 cores with hyper-threading, than 8 individual cores.

The performance hit, due to shared resources, was obvious in certain workloads when the FX chips performed worse than lower core count Intel chips; and even AMD's previous architecture Thuban in some instances.

 

[HardReset]

It was the matter of the definition of a core. In this instance it was how core resources were shared. The FX cores were more akin to 4 cores with hyper-threading, than 8 individual cores.

The performance hit, due to shared resources, was obvious in certain workloads when the FX chips performed worse than lower core count Intel chips; and even AMD's previous architecture Thuban in some instances.

FX CPUs only really shared FPU. Everything else was either not shared at all or was only partially shared. Also you could run two different threads independently and even disable one of two cores on same cluster. There is absolutely Nothing that says FX-8350 was NOT 8-core CPU. For FPU, first x86 CPUs had no FPU at all. They were 0-core CPUs then? For Hyper Threading, difference is that Hyper Threading does not multiply execution units. Meaning AMD core cluster is not comparable against HT/SMT.

And so what? Since when Performance is about amount of cores? How about lawsuit against Intel because 112-core Xeon 6746E is slower than 96-core Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7995WX? Because you would expect 112-core to be faster than 96-core? No wonder that lawsuit happened on America. Someone getting money just because he is stupid

 

[Vanderlinde]

AMD FX did offer value for the money, and if you where into OC'ing those chips where fun. 40% free performance out of the box. They where the first as well to release CPU's with unlocked multipliers unlike intel.

Anyway; the only winners in here would be the lawyers. The settlement will likely be 30$ per CPU.

 

[wiyosaya]

AMD FX did offer value for the money, and if you where into OC'ing those chips where fun. 40% free performance out of the box. They where the first as well to release CPU's with unlocked multipliers unlike intel.

Anyway; the only winners in here would be the lawyers. The settlement will likely be 30$ per CPU.

Yes. The US should make a law that says that 95% of class-action payouts should go to customers directly affected by the item at the basis of the lawsuit instead of 95% (or more) going to "class-action" lawers.

 

[MarcusNumb]

Financial costs in this case is nothing to Intel, they have a enormous fund to handle it, but the loss of brand credibility is much worse and serious. I think it's a good alarming bell for them, if they really want to do better.
This problem and the fact that AMD is releasing new CPUs cheaper than last gen CPUs makes me very happy for the future of CPU market.

 

[Sir Reginald]

Financial costs in this case is nothing to Intel, they have a enormous fund to handle it, but the loss of brand credibility is much worse and serious. I think it's a good alarming bell for them, if they really want to do better.
This problem and the fact that AMD is releasing new CPUs cheaper than last gen CPUs makes me very happy for the future of CPU market.

Financial costs in this case is nothing to Intel, they have a enormous fund to handle it, but the loss of brand credibility is much worse and serious. I think it's a good alarming bell for them, if they really want to do better.
This problem and the fact that AMD is releasing new CPUs cheaper than last gen CPUs makes me very happy for the future of CPU market.

Financial costs in this case is nothing to Intel, they have a enormous fund to handle it, but the loss of brand credibility is much worse and serious. I think it's a good alarming bell for them, if they really want to do better.
This problem and the fact that AMD is releasing new CPUs cheaper than last gen CPUs makes me very happy for the future of CPU market.

Those deep pockets used to be true but that isn’t as true as it once was - otherwise they wouldn’t need to lay off thousands.

Their 10nm process was not a success. Their gpu first generation was a failure. Their server class CPUs have been outflanked as well. Their AI business isn’t going well.

Arrow lake must do well. Battlemage must do well. Their ai solutions must catch up. There has been talk that without government handouts they might have and still might face bankruptcy in the not too distant future.

Not only will they have to RMA hundreds of thousands of expensive high end replacements but also shell out money per claim for hundreds of thousands of class claimants.

Pat better polish up his CV as he’s going to be the next victim of intel’s implosion. It’s truly shocking for me since virtually all my PCs are Intel and that’s because their reputation and performance was stellar.

Not anymore.

 

[rmcrys]

FX CPUs only really shared FPU. Everything else was either not shared at all or was only partially shared. […]. For FPU, first x86 CPUs had no FPU at all.

You are justifying that AMD was right because…many decades ago and at the baby stage of computers… an FPU wasn’t needed/want integrated? LOL ! AMD was in trouble because those cores shared many important resources of a CPU and that bottlenecked the performance, thus misleading the consumer thinking they were all “full” cores. You can cover holes with paint saying they aren’t, but behind the paint…they are still holes.

It’s truly shocking for me since virtually all my PCs are Intel and that’s because their reputation and performance was stellar.

Not anymore.

How old are your PCs and your own memory?

Intel has been imposing to OEMs their market power and that they have to choose them over AMD. As an OEM you could perfectly have an Intel and an AMD SKU and the customer decide for themselves. But no, most only offer Intel and Intel has been for ages very limited or bad!
- first -as AMD wasn’t good- Intel had the same architecture recycled for ages and you people were stuck with 2/4-core chips. Intel was the only player earning loads of money with that
- when AMD stroke with the first Ryzen, for years and even now, it was and is difficult to find an OEM that offers AMD chips. As in recent years Intel is shouting themselves in the foot, some are offering more AMD. But just because Intel is really bad ATM and they are forced to go AMD even if Intel pressures them.
- Intel’s first GPU? Intel has been having GPUs since many many years ago, they were just horrible and incapable. Then they had the Iris Pro that they barely offered because they wanted a lot of money for the extra and the drivers were very bad. Only when AMD was pumping GPUs very well on their APUs and selling well for desktops and consoles, Intel started to offer a fight. But not until Intel started to lose big time businesses on consoles and desktops.
- Intel artificially got their architecture faster doing some shortcuts, those found by hackers that eventually were software patched and cpus got c slow. Only the customer lost here.

The history shows us that Intel just forced a monopoly and earned a lot of money (and stopped working). If AMD didn’t fight strong, we would probably be with 6 core processors and game insufficient iGPUs.

 

[HardReset]

You are justifying that AMD was right because…many decades ago and at the baby stage of computers… an FPU wasn’t needed/want integrated? LOL ! AMD was in trouble because those cores shared many important resources of a CPU and that bottlenecked the performance, thus misleading the consumer thinking they were all “full” cores. You can cover holes with paint saying they aren’t, but behind the paint…they are still holes.

Whole lawsuit exsted because someone didn't check what he was buying. Of course, right action then is to claim that "I thought 300 dollar CPU was as fast as 1000 dollar CPU because both have 8 cores". America...

Intel is also misleading customers because Intel is trying to say their 24 core Raptor Lake is like 50 faster than 16-core Ryzen. That is because one can expect cores to be equal. Exactly same type of logic that was used on Bulldozer lawsuit.

 

[Vanderlinde]

Financial costs in this case is nothing to Intel, they have a enormous fund to handle it, but the loss of brand credibility is much worse and serious. I think it's a good alarming bell for them, if they really want to do better.
This problem and the fact that AMD is releasing new CPUs cheaper than last gen CPUs makes me very happy for the future of CPU market.

Yep - the server parts are having the same if not higher failure rates as well.

Last year I upgraded from XEON to EPYC and believe me - it's so much better.