Dylan Browne, an Unreal Engine Artist and supervisor for ModelFarm, has announced that his creative studio, which specializes in VFX, animation, and virtual production for blockbuster films (e.g., The Equalizer 3), will be switching to AMD Ryzen 9 9950X “Zen 5” desktop processors after witnessing a 50% failure rate for its current machines, which utilize Intel’s flagship Core i9-13900K and Core i9-14900K CPUs. The news comes a day after Intel announced that it had concluded its investigation into the instability issues surrounding its 13th and 14th Gen Core processors, confirming the root cause to be a microcode algorithm issue.
Intel writes:
- “Our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a microcode algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage requests to the processor.”
- “Intel is delivering a microcode patch which addresses the root cause of exposure to elevated voltages.”
- “We are continuing validation to ensure that scenarios of instability reported to Intel regarding its Core 13th/14th Gen desktop processors are addressed.”
- “Intel is currently targeting mid-August for patch release to partners following full validation.”
Browne’s response:
For those curious at work our failure rate for our 13900k and 14900k machines is about 50% so far, any new machine builds going to be 9950x's, production environments need reliability#intel
— Dylan Browne (@DylserX) July 23, 2024
More info from Intel, per a reddit post:
From the post above:
We can confirm that the via Oxidation manufacturing issue affected some early Intel Core 13th Gen desktop processors. However, the issue was root caused and addressed with manufacturing improvements and screens in 2023. We have also looked at it from the instability reports on Intel Core 13th Gen desktop processors and the analysis to-date has determined that only a small number of instability reports can be connected to the manufacturing issue.
For the Instability issue, we are delivering a microcode patch which addresses exposure to elevated voltages which is a key element of the Instability issue. We are currently validating the microcode patch to ensure the instability issues for 13th/14th Gen are addressed.