Intel 13th & 14th Gen Instability Issues Cased By Buggy Microcode, eTVB Fix Issued In New BIOS With “0x125” Microcode

Intel has discovered the root cause of its 13th and 14th Gen CPU Instability issues which stems from a buggy microcode associated with eTVB feature.

Intel's Buggy Microcode Algorithm For eTVB Cause Intel 13th & 14th Gen CPU Instability Issues, New BIOS Rolling Out Soon

Although Intel has yet to publicly issue a statement regarding the serious matter of instability that affects its high-end 13th and 14th Gen CPUs despite saying that it would do so a few months back, it looks like Igor's Lab has discovered internal documents (NDA) which spill the beans on what has been causing these issues from the start.

Related Story Intel’s Official Statement on 14th & 13th Gen CPU Instability Issues: Use “Intel Default Settings”, Not “Baseline Power” BIOS

The first reports of Intel's 13th and 14th Gen Instability issues can be found more than a year back across various forums and Steam's per-game discussion pages where gamers started seeing the issue on a common basis. The issue then came to the limelight earlier this year when more & more people started having issues.

The issues were so bad that gamers were returning their entire PCs and getting new ones with AMD Ryzen CPUs instead. Although a fix was provided after Intel forced its board partners to issue "Intel Default Settings" as the default options for power limits, this caused a severe drop in performance which meant that reviewers and tech outlets had to redo the entire 13th & 14th Gen reviews using settings that were stable and didn't caused any problems to end users.

In the documents, Intel states that the root cause happens to be an incorrect value within the microcode algorithm associated with the eTVB (Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost) feature that comes with 13th and 14th Gen Unlocked CPUs. The increased frequency and the corresponding high voltages which lead to high temperatures can lead to a reduction in the processor's reliability which is more or less saying that your CPU will degrade over time. Knowing that