Intel is finally investigating reports of high-end 13th/14th-gen CPUs causing game crashes

[midian182]

In brief: Remember back in February when we saw more reports of Intel's top-end 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs causing game instability, especially in titles powered by the Unreal Engine? It's led to many people returning their processes, and Team Blue now says it is finally investigating the problem.

There were several reports at the start of the year about Core i9-13900K and Core i7-14900K users experiencing crashes in games. While many reported seeing an "out of video memory" error, some noted that games would close for no apparent reason, leaving them on the desktop. Other reports complained that the systems froze entirely and required a restart.

With most of the problems seemingly affecting Unreal titles like Fortnite, Epic Games advised users to adjust their BIOS settings, changing the SVID Behavior setting to Intel Fail Safe on Asus, Gigabyte, or MSI boards.

Epic-owned RAD, the company behind the Bink video codec and Oodle data compression technology, said "overly optimistic BIOS settings" are causing a small percentage of processors to go out of their functional range of clock rate and power draw under high load, and execute instructions incorrectly.

Fatshark, developer of Vermintide 2 and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, advised those experiencing problems to underclock the Performance Core speed using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU), from x55 to x53. Gearbox's advice was to remove any overclocks or use XTU, though changes made in the BIOS persist after a reset, unlike those made with Intel's software. More recently, the developer of Outpost: Infinity Siege suggested that players using Intel i9-13900K or 14900K CPUs should downclock them from 5.5GHz to around 5GHz to avoid crashes.

Nvidia's response to the problem

Remnant 2, Hogwarts Legacy, The Finals, Overwatch 2, and Nightingale have also been experiencing issues. ZDNet Korea writes that Tekken 8 has been showing an error message stating the PC doesn't have enough memory, even on systems with huge amounts of VRAM and system RAM. It's reported that around 10 people in South Korea are returning their 13th-gen or 14th-gen CPUs or prebuilt PCs that use the chips every day, exchanging them for equivalent AMD Ryzen processors. The news could be what prompted Intel to finally confirm it is investigating the issues.

Intel told the publication that it's "aware of problems that occur when executing certain tasks on 13th and 14th generation core processors for desktop PCs, and is analyzing them with major affiliates."

It might not be an ideal solution, but until Intel comes up with something better, it appears that the only way to deal with the game instability is downclocking, lowering the power/current limits, and undervolting 13th/14th-gen CPUs.

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Intel is finally investigating reports of high-end 13th/14th-gen CPUs causing game crashes

 

[Squid Surprise]

I can already see Intel’s solution: “buy the new CPUs we’re releasing in a few months.”

 

[godrilla]

Comparing my own experience of the 9900ks vs 7800X3D, the Intel cpu gave my dozens of blue screens that I couldn't figure out that haven't happened ever since I upgraded to Zen4 3d.
Same small form factor build, same Noctua D15 cooler and same h210 case.

 

[Watzupken]

The fact that this is only happening to the i9 is a sign that these chips are being fed way too much power and pushed too hard. Otherwise, why not i7 since it’s also running with 8 P-cores? I never ran into issue with any games on both i7 10700K and 12700K as well.

 

[LetTheWookieWin]

I wonder if these were being run with MCE or some other bypass of the power limits enabled?

My brother noticed that this was enabled by default on his MSI board with his 13700K. He found it running a workload where his Arctic Freezer 360 couldn’t keep up with the heat output, which was insane for that cooler. A 13900K or 14900K would be even worse.

 

[RandomWAN]

Is there any confirmed reports of what settings the crashing users were running? I'm curious if any of these were experiencing the same errors with an UV or UV/OC on the i9s since the stock settings can sometimes go off the rails in terms of power draw.

I've played a number of the titles listed with a 12700k using an UV/OC and raised turbo/boost settings without any issues or temperature irregularities.

 

[opckieran]

If a lawsuit comes from this, Intel’s defense will probably be that the processors are in fact running at their advertised speeds…


The frequency race stopped making sense years ago. The diminishing performance gains after 4.5-5Ghz never made up for the insane heat, power consumption, and lifecycle costs in my opinion…

 

[Squid Surprise]

The fact that this is only happening to the i9 is a sign that these chips are being fed way too much power and pushed too hard. Otherwise, why not i7 since it’s also running with 8 P-cores? I never ran into issue with any games on both i7 10700K and 12700K as well.

Also the fact that the “solutions” are simply to downvolt or underclock the CPU… guess Intel just tuned them too fast in order to take the performance crown from AMD - which they didn’t even take…

 

[Neatfeatguy]

"out of video memory"

I've had that issue in the past, but that was because after doing a new install of Windows 7 on a SSD, Windows never set a paging file like it should have. It should default to automatic, but It was set to zero. After I figured this out I just manually set it to 4GB or something along those lines and I never had that problem again.

I played a lot of games and I had zero issues with them, that was until I started playing Shadow of Mordor. 16GB of RAM and my 980Ti with 6GB VRAM, I was getting meet with "out of video memory" coming up. Kill and restart the game was my temporary fix for the issue. Eventually I grew tired of it that I started looking for the problem and that's when I found there was no paging file setup.

You get people these days that claim paging file is not needed because of high amounts of RAM systems have and computers are running on SSDs. Those people are stupid. Set the paging file to automatic or at least to something such as 4GB and you won't run into preventable issues, as rare as they might be.

 

[arrowflash]

I don't have one of these CPUs. But sometimes I get CTDs with "out of video memory" errors when running some games or emulators that use Vulkan (never got this error on D3D or OpenGL). 64 GB ram, RTX 2060 Super with 8 GB vram.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

"out of video memory"

I've had that issue in the past, but that was because after doing a new install of Windows 7 on a SSD, Windows never set a paging file like it should have. It should default to automatic, but It was set to zero. After I figured this out I just manually set it to 4GB or something along those lines and I never had that problem again.

I played a lot of games and I had zero issues with them, that was until I started playing Shadow of Mordor. 16GB of RAM and my 980Ti with 6GB VRAM, I was getting meet with "out of video memory" coming up. Kill and restart the game was my temporary fix for the issue. Eventually I grew tired of it that I started looking for the problem and that's when I found there was no paging file setup.

You get people these days that claim paging file is not needed because of high amounts of RAM systems have and computers are running on SSDs. Those people are stupid. Set the paging file to automatic or at least to something such as 4GB and you won't run into preventable issues, as rare as they might be.

These people are not "stupid". The way that Windows handles memory and pagefile is what's stupid. If you are using 60% of your RAM, and the system crashes because there is no pagefile, then the operating system is coded incorrectly, and cannot consistently use the full resources provided.

Linux has no issue with this.

Also the fact that the “solutions” are simply to downvolt or underclock the CPU… guess Intel just tuned them too fast in order to take the performance crown from AMD - which they didn’t even take…

Intel is stuck between a rock and a hard place. All they can do is keep clocking up their CPUs, but they've long past the efficiency curve and now all they can do is package extreme OC CPUs as stock and pray they dont melt.

If a lawsuit comes from this, Intel’s defense will probably be that the processors are in fact running at their advertised speeds…


The frequency race stopped making sense years ago. The diminishing performance gains after 4.5-5Ghz never made up for the insane heat, power consumption, and lifecycle costs in my opinion…

The only reason you are not seeing the performance is due to temperature issues. These CPUs cannot maintain these core clocks over the long term, and the 12th, 13th, and 14th gen all settle along the same clock speeds once warmed up. The people using custom liquid loops or extreme cooling methods show continued improvements past what reviews show.

Software doesnt stop benefiting from clock speeds at 5 ghz, it comes down to the arch itself having issues scaling.

 

[opckieran]

The only reason you are not seeing the performance is due to temperature issues. These CPUs cannot maintain these core clocks over the long term, and the 12th, 13th, and 14th gen all settle along the same clock speeds once warmed up. The people using custom liquid loops or extreme cooling methods show continued improvements past what reviews show.

My point exactly. The higher we push clock speeds, the more extreme cooling methods are required. Heat and power rise exponentially after a certain sweet spot.

Software doesnt stop benefiting from clock speeds at 5 ghz, it comes down to the arch itself having issues scaling.

Mathematically, the percentage of performance gained from 3-4Ghz is greater than any 1Ghz increment above that. 3 to 4 GHz is a 33% increase (in a perfect world). 4 to 5 GHz is 25%, and 5 to 6 is only 20%. Hence diminishing returns. And that’s before contending with the aforementioned heat and power issues.

 

[poohbear]

I have a 13700k. Thing was running in the 80s in games and spiking into the 90s on the regular. I lowered the power limit to 150watts in the BIOS and now its running in the 70s w/ occasional spikes in the 80s, which I'm much more comfortable with.

I don't know who's idea it was to remove all thermal limits on these CPUs in the BIOS, but the heat & stability issues just aren't worth it, especially in the summer. With ARM CPUs on the horizon for PCs, Intel REALLY needs to get its act together.

 

[Kitsone]

"out of video memory"

I've had that issue in the past, but that was because after doing a new install of Windows 7 on a SSD, Windows never set a paging file like it should have. It should default to automatic, but It was set to zero. After I figured this out I just manually set it to 4GB or something along those lines and I never had that problem again.

I played a lot of games and I had zero issues with them, that was until I started playing Shadow of Mordor. 16GB of RAM and my 980Ti with 6GB VRAM, I was getting meet with "out of video memory" coming up. Kill and restart the game was my temporary fix for the issue. Eventually I grew tired of it that I started looking for the problem and that's when I found there was no paging file setup.

You get people these days that claim paging file is not needed because of high amounts of RAM systems have and computers are running on SSDs. Those people are stupid. Set the paging file to automatic or at least to something such as 4GB and you won't run into preventable issues, as rare as they might be.

Nice anecdotal story. Unfortunately computers are complex and the same error message can have multiple possible sources so the same silver bullet solution that worked for you is not a universal fix for that error message. I truly doubt all these people happened to find and followed the old flawed information to disable their paging file and additionally returned the CPU before changing a windows setting back or otherwise resetting/reinstalling windows back to defaults.

 

[LetTheWookieWin]

I have a 13700k. Thing was running in the 80s in games and spiking into the 90s on the regular. I lowered the power limit to 150watts in the BIOS and now its running in the 70s w/ occasional spikes in the 80s, which I'm much more comfortable with.

I don't know who's idea it was to remove all thermal limits on these CPUs in the BIOS, but the heat & stability issues just aren't worth it, especially in the summer. With ARM CPUs on the horizon for PCs, Intel REALLY needs to get its act together.

This sounds exactly like my brother’s issue as described in my earlier post. Once he disabled the BIOS setting (that was enabled by default) that bypassed these limits, his 13700K behaved remarkably better from a power and heat perspective. The kicker for him was that there was little or no performance penalty after disabling this setting.

I think the MB manufacturers started doing this to game the benchmarks and make it appear like their designs were markedly better than their competitors’.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Nice anecdotal story. Unfortunately computers are complex and the same error message can have multiple possible sources so the same silver bullet solution that worked for you is not a universal fix for that error message. I truly doubt all these people happened to find and followed the old flawed information to disable their paging file and additionally returned the CPU before changing a windows setting back or otherwise resetting/reinstalling windows back to defaults.

True, but never assume. A lot of people tinker with stuff, not understanding the consequences that may ensue.

 

[axiomatic13]

Current theory from JayzTwoCents is that it seems most gaming motherboards "auto overclock" default BIOS setting are pushing this CPU too hard.

 

[scavengerspc]

some noted that games would close for no apparent reason, leaving them on the desktop.

That's what I have seen. But it is very rare.

 

[kiwigraeme]

These people are not "stupid". The way that Windows handles memory and pagefile is what's stupid. If you are using 60% of your RAM, and the system crashes because there is no pagefile, then the operating system is coded incorrectly, and cannot consistently use the full resources provided.

Should update my bios, but if I have a lot open, I will get a BSOD rarely - think you are right is mostly windows page system. I check the C, drive open run admin and do a scannow and it's ilk to check .
It is annoying, but I suppose flip side is stops many malware attacks

 

[Kitsone]

True, but never assume. A lot of people tinker with stuff, not understanding the consequences that may ensue.

Agreed, lets not assume something anecdotal is universal due to the complexities involved.

 

[MSIGamer]

I wonder if these were being run with MCE or some other bypass of the power limits enabled?

My brother noticed that this was enabled by default on his MSI board with his 13700K. He found it running a workload where his Arctic Freezer 360 couldn’t keep up with the heat output, which was insane for that cooler. A 13900K or 14900K would be even worse.

Take any motherboard with default settings and you'll notice issues over time with 13th / 14th gen.
The terrible thing is that they seemingly operate well for a while, but at some point all starts going to hell.
Pcs that we have are now running a 190W power limit which seems to help, but causes a ~10% performance hit.
Anything is better than crashes and data corruption at this point

 

[MSIGamer]

That's what I have seen. But it is very rare.

And that's the terrible thing. You don't immediately notice the issues or you blame them on software, but these issues don't occur on a stable system. They will get less rare over time, the more the processor is used.
Intel really has a big problem on their hands here.

 

[Kam7r]

Those high end 13/14ths are pushed way beyond their stable limits and should never have been sold... but it was the only thing that could allow the blues to tell people that they are still relevant

 

[RaXelliX]

I played a lot of games and I had zero issues with them, that was until I started playing Shadow of Mordor. 16GB of RAM and my 980Ti with 6GB VRAM, I was getting meet with "out of video memory" coming up. Kill and restart the game was my temporary fix for the issue. Eventually I grew tired of it that I started looking for the problem and that's when I found there was no paging file setup.

These people are not "stupid". The way that Windows handles memory and pagefile is what's stupid. If you are using 60% of your RAM, and the system crashes because there is no pagefile, then the operating system is coded incorrectly, and cannot consistently use the full resources provided.

You're both right. I too have experienced the fact that some games expect multi-gig paging files. In my case it was 2017's Mass Effect Andromeda that for some reason kept crashing despite that fact that my page file was not disabled. After increasing it's size the errors stopped.

It's also true that Windows still has a lot of legacy crap in place - especially when it comes to storage. remember when it was trying to defragment SSD's?
Page file is a remnant of the past but for compatibility reasons it has to be enabled for edge cases.

 

[Strawman]

Also the fact that the “solutions” are simply to downvolt or underclock the CPU… guess Intel just tuned them too fast in order to take the performance crown from AMD - which they didn’t even take…

Of course they did. Really you don't think Intel has the performance crown? Intel leads, by a big margin, do an aggregate of ST performance, MT performance and gaming. On the top 8 CPUs in aggregate performance, 6 are Intel, and they also occupy the first 4 places.

here you go

https://tpucdn.com/review/intel-core-i9-14900ks/images/relative-performance-cpu.png