Seven months since the supposed conclusion of Intel’s 13th/14th Gen “Raptor Lake” CPU issues relating to the Vmin Shift bug that causes these chips to degrade, it looks like Team Blue has published one more microcode update to keep chip casualties to a minimum.
One More Fix For Intel Raptor Lake Chips
Per its announcement post, this is a supplemental update for the 0x12B microcode released last September to resolve a scenario where systems “run for multiple days with low activity and lightly-threaded workloads”. Below is the important portion of the statement:
As part of its effort to continually improve its products, Intel is releasing a new microcode update (0x12F) supplementing the 0x12B microcode update released in September 2024. This new microcode further improves system conditions that can potentially contribute to Vmin Shift Instability on Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop-powered systems. Intel is releasing this 0x12F update based on Intel’s investigation of a limited number of reports regarding systems continuously running for multiple days with low-activity and lightly-threaded workloads.
The chipmaker noted that no further performance penalty is incurred on these Raptor Lake chips when the fix gets applied, so that’s good news at least. however, this may be another rather annoying step for users not to keen on getting their hands dirty with BIOS updates. Affected users will need to check their respective motherboard’s support pages to obtain the latest fix.
Pokdepinion: Let’s hope that’s the end of it.
