Intel CPUs are dying, the performance impact of fixes is in the units of percent

In recent weeks to months, Intel has been dealing with a serious issue where its 13th and 14th series processors die prematurely. By all accounts, these primarily K-series (i.e. “overclocker”) models are operated beyond the limits of what the silicon can handle, and the proportion of reclaimed units is extremely high.

The problem has a relatively simple solution: throttling the operating parameters of the CPU from “down to the core” to “regular profiles”, which Intel also recommended to motherboard manufacturers – let’s forget that it’s a bit of an alibi on his part, because he was the one who told the manufacturers this if he did not directly recommend it, he did not forbid it in any way. Jan Olšan on Cnews covers the matter in more detail.

However, if all owners of processors such as the Intel 13900K or 14900K and the like were to switch to conservative operating profiles (the so-called “Baseline Profile”), their performance would be reduced. After all, Intel’s K-processors have been operating at increased parameters for the last few years in order to show at least some hint of competitiveness against AMD Ryzens, even with multiple times higher consumption.

Phoronix set out to measure Intel CPU performance on Linux after switching to standard baseline profiles, with an Intel Core i9-14900K on an ASUS PRIME Z790-P WiFi board with the new BIOS 1656 bringing the Baseline profile. The results are briefly as follows: tens of watts lower maximum and average consumption in the load and -3% power down on average. But with x265, for example, the performance drop when encoding 4k video is by 3 to 13% – the variance is considerable, Phoronix considers that the real performance on the Baseline profile is a question of how the operating parameters (consumption, temperature, etc.) and therefore the settings RAPL/PowerCap. The question is whether the code in the Linux kernel will somehow adapt to this essentially radical change in the control of CPU operating parameters with the new Baseline profile.