Epic Games is attributing the rising incidents of reported Unreal Engine game crashes and Oodle Data decompression failures to Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs.
According to RAD, a division of Epic Games responsible for developing the Bink video codec and Oodle data compression technology utilized in numerous games, they are directly attributing the issue to Intel.
The software team clarifies that the issues are unrelated to any code within their products or Unreal. They highlight that similar problems are observed in other software like CineBench, Handbrake, and Visual Studio.
The reasoning behind this phenomenon isn’t particularly surprising.
The instability can be traced back to the Power Limit Unlocks present in Intel Core CPUs, or more precisely, motherboard manufacturers prioritizing performance, benchmark dominance, and social recognition at the potential expense of your processor’s stability and longevity.
For nearly a decade, motherboard manufacturers like ASUS have consistently pushed the boundaries, risking your hardware to achieve marginal performance gains. Whether it’s through increasing core voltages by a few hundred millivolts or SoC voltages, or in the case of Intel Core CPUs, a BIOS-level unlocking of the power limit.
These practices have been prevalent and have worked a charm in terms of marketing.
ASUS is renowned for crafting high-quality motherboards that excel in maximizing system performance through overclocking. However, they are not the sole player in this pursuit. Other vendors like MSI and GIGABYTE also implement similar measures in their so-called “default” settings. ASRock stands out as the only manufacturer I can recall that maintains a proper ring/uncore frequency on Intel’s hybrid CPUs.
This non-standard “default” configuration is precisely why Intel’s power consumption skyrockets during idle. Many review outlets highlight the alarming idle power draws for high-end unlocked 13th and 14th Generation Core processors. This is because those CPUs are actually overclocked by default.
Unfortunately, some tech journalists neglect this issue for malicious reasons, relying instead on out-of-spec “XMP” memory profiles rather than reviewing processors using the CPU’s own default memory setting.
Concerns regarding stability issues on the 13900K and 13700K aren’t widespread, but have notably surfaced in specific games, particularly those involving shader compilation such as Remnant 2 and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 respectively.
The Intel Core i9-13900K and i7-13700K are initially set with a PL2 value of 253W by default. However, motherboard adjustments can unlock this limit to an unlimited state, effectively communicating to the processor that it has access to 4096 W of power, thus deviating from a strictly “stock” configuration, which is excellent for maximizing performance during review / benchmarking scenarios.
Certainly, both your PSU and CPU VRM are incapable of delivering 4096W. As a result, the processor typically draws as much power as necessary to sustain optimal core boost frequencies for both Intel’s Performance (P-Core) and Efficient (E-Core) cores until your processor inevitably reaches a thermal limitation, as Intel Core processors are notorious for being hot and hungry.
Under standard frequencies and boost bins, unlocked power limits can push the power draw of the i9-13900K as high as 373 W during multithreaded tasks with the power limiter removed.
As expected, pushing your Intel Core processor to its limits at stock settings inevitably leads to issues down the line. Apart from the increased electricity costs, this can also result in degraded stability, particularly with gaming workloads, depending on your hardware combinations and settings.
The resolution for this issue isn’t surprising either. If you’re experiencing these errors, you’ll need to navigate your motherboard’s BIOS settings to undervolt your CPU. Additionally, you’ll have to revert to the stock power limiter and potentially even underclock your processor’s frequency due to the aforementioned degradation.
These measures are said to restore gaming performance stability for the i9-13900K and i7-13700K. While there have been no confirmed reports of this issue with the newer 14th Gen chips, it’s plausible that even the i9-14900K and i7-14700K could be affected.
It remains unclear why the issue doesn’t impact the 12th Gen chips, considering they share a fundamentally similar power design with the 13th and 14th Gen chips, built on a slightly less mature processing node and are effectively the same architecture.
In summary, motherboard manufacturers have once more prioritized their marketing tactics over your system’s longevity. Intel’s power delivery guidelines exist for a reason, similar to AMD’s, yet motherboard manufacturers have disregarded these recommendations and pushed your CPU to its limits.
Sometimes, you simply can’t defy the laws of thermodynamics. Intel urgently needs to follow AMD’s example and crack down on board vendors engaging in such practices. Allowing board vendors to act unchecked only harms Intel in the long run, much akin to how AMD faced immense scrutiny over “exploding CPUs” thanks to ASUS and their cancerous practices.
This is a situation that needs immediate attention.
However, if Intel were to crack down on these unethical practices, they would lose their only advantage in competing against rival CPUs. As mentioned earlier, tech journalists and review outlets often conduct benchmarks using a “default” state, which may or may not have a Power Limit state of 4096 watts depending on the motherboard.
This results in fluctuating core frequencies and undeniably improved performance, leading to higher frames per second on motherboards that prioritize pushing your CPU for superficial gains. It’s evident that Intel’s performance boosts stem solely from these deceptive power limiters, with artificial clock speeds proving unsustainable even in the short term.
Keep in mind, the 13th Generation of Intel Core processors only entered the market towards the end of 2022. It’s been just over a year, yet there has been a growing number of users voicing complaints for months.
