this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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[–] Geek_King 52 points 4 months ago (4 children)

I used to use nothing but Intel every time I built a new gaming PC. My last build in early 2021, I went with AMD 6900, and I've been real happy with it. I had been planning on going back to Intel for my next build, but this has spooked the shit out of me.

[–] BombOmOm 61 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

The worst part is Intel has known about this issue since at least 2023 and did not take ownership of the issue. They did not proactively recall defective chips, they just sold them and hoped people would not return the defective product.

It took teams of individuals cataloguing error rates to confirm this issue exists and for media like Level 1 Techs and Gamer’s Nexus to confirm and get the word out.

It is a complete damnation of Intel that the ‘solution’ was to brush this massive issue under the rug and fuck over customers.

[–] ChicoSuave 34 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Graybeards know Intel has always been this shitty. There was a time when Intel and AMD used the same socket type, the legendary 386 and 486 generations were amazing. Intel needed a way to stand out from AMD and Cyrex, a long forgotten big chip maker that died when Intel walked away from the x86 naming convention and used their own socket type to make the Pentium. But that's a story for someone else to tell at another time.

Intel started from betrayal and grew out of spite. When it flourished it would use its influence on governments to avoid including bids on non-Intel computers. The Wiki article for Intel has a section for legal issues AND a separate section for product issues, a distinction needed for very few other companies. Intel has always been underhanded and evil - they just also happened to design fantastic CPU architecture for a while.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

True, but don’t forget the K6-2 and how they screwed up the paths so when it heated up it’d short itself out. Coupled with the lack of a thermal regulator and you could turn an AMD into a pile of silicon.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

I think you're thinking of the Socket A Athlon/Duron/Sempron. A lot of coolers used shitty mounting designs so it was possible to get it off alignment or over-pressure it and crack the die, and no heatspreader + poor thermal controls allowed for a meltdown if the mountng was bad.

The K6-2 was pretty solid aside from not quite holding performance crowns.

[–] Blue_Morpho 10 points 4 months ago

I find it intriguing that despite Intel hitting its numbers and getting great press for the past few months, the stock has been on a sharp decline. It's as if some knew the bad news was about to hit soon.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

As large companies yend to do, always thinking, hoping, that people won't find out. But people in the end always do. There are always these nerds (compliment) who won't give up, go to the last bit to find out what's happening and they'll always find it. Why be so stupid?

I present to you: Middle Management!

[–] Beryl 35 points 4 months ago

I honestly don't understand why you'd go back to Intel these days. Performance is only comparable if Intel chips guzzle like twice the wattage, and they'll make sure you have to also change your mobo by conveniently switching sockets every two years. What's the upside of going Intel?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago

I mean, high tech manufacturers have products with issues. Even recently AMD chips were frying due to bad motherboard firmware this generation.

What matters is how well the company responds to the issue, how fast and easy their recall of the defective parts is, and

Sorry, I've just been told Intel isn't doing a recall and has told everyone to just talk to the support chatbots, which will totally not reject your RMA request this time they swear.

So uh nevermind, don't buy Intel.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much the same here. Switched to AMD after Heartbleed/Spectre. Was torn between AMD or giving Intel another shot in my next build, up until a few weeks ago when this news broke. It's going to take alot for me to consider Intel again.

[–] BrightCandle 43 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I suspect there are going to be many lawsuits all over the globe about this. The situation is so bad and so expensive Intel has decided to weather all those lawsuits and class actions instead of doing a recall. That suggests to me odds are everything they have made since the 13th Gen is soon for an early tech graveyard.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Obviously did the maths where lawsuits would cost less than a recall

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

recall, immediately foot the bill and still have to fix something they probably haven't fix yet. (the article mention maybe microcode update in August. ) taking lawsuits, they can drag it on and buy themselves time to figure out how to deal with it.

the legal side thing is, unless the claimant can prove that intel "knew" about this and still selling the broken item, there is not much they can do about it other than going through warranty process and get a replacement. However, now many outlet prove that to be a case from small companies to big data centers, they can't keep selling those units as if they are not broken. Some thing needs to be done properly(like as MS for a mandatory update if detect such CPU or work with MB for BIOS update with a feature block) from their legal dept and make sure new buyers have ways to mitigate it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Thank you Microsoft, forcing everyone to buy new CPUs just to be able to run their latest iteration of Windows.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Wat. This has nothing to do with Windows 11 system requirements.

[–] qaz 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Windows required CPU's to have certain extensions/instructions to use the newest version, which might have required buying a new CPU and thus getting one of the affected ones. However, I don't think it's reasonable to blame Microsoft for this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (1 children)

M$ is not the source of this problem, but they did force TPM 2.0 on their OS, forcing people to throw away older CPUs, so they made it much worse.

[–] qaz 3 points 4 months ago

Oh yeah, I forgot about TPM 2.0 and was just thinking about POPCNT etc.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

Joke's on MS, I'm happy that it doesn't nag me to upgrade.