(Image credit: Intel)

Reports of Raptor Lake instability issues have been at an all-time low since Intel released firmware updates several months ago — but they're not completely gone. Intel released microcode update 0x12F last week to fix Vmin Shift instability, an issue that was thought to have been fixed with previous microcode updates.

Microcode update 0x12F is reportedly an extension of the microcode update 0x12B, and it supplements 0x12B with additional fixes that weren't covered. Specifically, 0x12F fixes a limited issue surrounding instability on Raptor Lake systems operating for multiple days in a row, running low-activity, lightly-threaded workloads.

Intel confirmed that microcode update 0x12F does not incur any additional performance penalties beyond what previous microcode updates might have added. To clarify, microcode update 0x12F specifically applies to 13th- and 14th-generation processors and does not apply to Intel's latest-generation Core Ultra 200S series processors, which have no (known) instability issues.

Intel fixed the majority of Raptor Lake's instability issues in September 2024 with mega firmware update 0x12B, which addressed several major issues causing chaos on affected chips (and lead many chips to an accelerated death). Update 0x12B combined microcode updates 0x125 and 0x129, and addressed elevated voltage requests by Raptor Lake CPUs during light activity or when idle. (Update 0x125 addressed an eTVB issue causing Vmin shift, while 0x129 addressed other high voltage requests by Raptor Lake CPUs, similar to 0x12B).

Prior to these firmware updates, many Raptor Lake chips were experiencing accelerated wear and tear, especially on the K-series parts — due to extreme stress on the clock tree circuit inside the IA core, and excessively high voltages and temperatures. Failure of the clock tree circuit would cause a shift in the clock duty cycle, leading to system instability — and, in many cases, CPU death.

Raptor Lake owners won't have to wait long for BIOS updates to arrive with the new firmware update. ComputerBase reports that some motherboard makers, such as ASRock, are already releasing BIOS updates with microcode update 0x12F.

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