Intel Processors Facing Premature Death Issue: Solutions and Impacts on Performance Revealed

In recent weeks, Intel has been dealing with a serious issue where its 13th and 14th series processors die prematurely. By all accounts, these K-series models in particular (ie “overclocker”) are operated beyond the limits that the silicon can handle, and the proportion of units obtained on very high back.

The problem has a very simple solution: climbing the operating parameters of the CPU from “down to the core” to “regular profiles”, which Intel also recommended to motherboard manufacturers – do not forget that it is a bit of an alibi on his part, because he was the one who told this to the manufacturers if he didn’t recommend it directly, he didn’t prevent it in any way. Things happen covered in more detail by Jan Olšan on Cnews.

However, if owners of processors such as the Intel 13900K or 14900K and similar were to switch to conservative operating profiles (the “Baseline Profile”), their performance would be reduced. After all, Intel’s K-processors have been working at more parameters for the past few years to show at least some idea of ​​competitiveness against AMD Ryzens, even with consumption several times higher .

Water from Phoronix on Linux to measure Intel CPU performance after switching to standard baseline profiles, with Intel Core i9-14900K on board WiFi ASUS PRIME Z790-P with the new BIOS 1656 giving the Baseline profile. The short results are as follows: tens of watts lower than the maximum and average consumption in the load and -3% power down on average. But for example, with x265, the reduction in performance when encoding 4k video is 3 to 13% – the difference is big, Phoronix believes that the real performance is on the Baseline profile is a matter of how the operating parameters (consumption, temperature, etc.). ) are just changed and so are the RAPL / PowerCap settings. The question is whether the code in the Linux kernel will somehow adapt to this fundamental change in CPU operating parameters control with the new Baseline profile.