Intel’s well-documented points with its high-end Thirteenth-gen and 14th-gen CPUs crashing or being usually unstable with PC video games might forged a cloud over gross sales of the agency’s next-gen Arrow Lake CPUs.
Or it’s the warning from a motherboard maker following the continued saga that has been dragged out over the course of this 12 months, with complaints from Core i9 processor house owners and numerous recommendation from Intel, together with really helpful settings for mitigation and a current BIOS repair. (The latter addressed a bug within the microcode for the Enhanced Thermal Velocity Increase characteristic of those CPUs, which Group Blue admitted might contribute to the crashing points).
At any fee, Wccftech reviews that ZDNet in Korea has spoken to a consultant of an unnamed motherboard producer who, beneath cowl of anonymity, raised issues about how this entire episode might impression Intel’s next-gen desktop CPU gross sales.
They’re quoted as saying: “If the stability issue is not clearly resolved, consumer distrust will increase, and sales of ‘Arrow Lake,’ a new processor for desktop PCs that Intel plans to release in the fourth quarter, will decrease.”
Evaluation: The hazard of tainted notion for Intel
Clearly, we should take this report with a great deal of warning, however actually – is that this revelation stunning? We’d argue that it isn’t, though what’s stunning, or definitely uncommon, is {that a} motherboard maker would come ahead with such a press release – sprinkle seasoning as famous – underlining the gravity of the state of affairs because it has unfurled.
Certainly, we’re struggling to recollect a extra complicated and thorny hardware-related situation in more moderen PC historical past. Fingers of blame have been pointed right here and there, whereas players who’ve spent some huge cash on top-end silicon have been struggling by the hands of crashes, which have undoubtedly been very irritating.
Whereas the issue has been resolved in a trend, root causes nonetheless haven’t been nailed down exactly and the talked about mitigations have a efficiency trade-off that lovers who purchase the likes of Intel’s Core i9 desktop processors aren’t going to be pleased with, both. Though clearly, dropping some frames is a greater different to persistent instability when gaming.
So, with that in thoughts, is it plausible that this debacle might dent the computing public’s confidence in Intel’s CPUs? We expect it’s doable, and logically, if Intel doesn’t provide you with a definitive answer comparatively quickly, this might forged shadows of doubt for these taking a look at Arrow Lake for a next-gen CPU.
Whereas not everybody has been affected by these gremlins by any means, the complaints are quite a few sufficient, and the controversy may have registered definitely. And regardless that Arrow Lake is a really completely different beast to present Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs from Intel – and appears like it’ll take energy utilization right down to a tamer stage, anyway – that gained’t matter to the typical PC purchaser, most probably. By no means thoughts relative energy consumption figures, the hazard is that they’ll simply have heard chatter alongside the strains of “well don’t buy Intel they’re unstable” or related sentiments, which may very well be fairly damaging for Group Blue.
We will see, however Intel is already on the again foot within the battle of the greatest CPUs for the following era, provided that Ryzen 9000 CPUs at the moment are imminent, and there’s even the prospect that AMD’s 9000X3D fashions – which can be nice for players – might flip up earlier than Arrow Lake does later in 2024 (or at the least across the similar time).
