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13900K and 14900K Instability Causing Oodle Decompression Failures

winjer

Gold Member
For people having problems with some games using Unreal Engine, be it developers or users, the issue might be clock rates and power usage too high, due to some UEFI settings.


RAD has become aware of a problem that can cause Oodle Data decompression failures, or crashes in games built with Unreal. We believe that this is a hardware problem which affects primarily Intel 13900K and 14900K processors, less likely 13700, 14700 and other related processors as well. Only a small fraction of those processors will exhibit this behavior. The problem seems to be caused by a combination of BIOS settings and the high clock rates and power usage of these processors, leading to system instability and unpredictable behavior under heavy load.

As far as we can tell, there is not any software bug in Oodle or Unreal that is causing this. Due to what seem to be overly optimistic BIOS settings, some small percentage of processors go out of their functional range of clock rate and power draw under high load, and execute instructions incorrectly. This is being seen disproportionately in Oodle Data decompression because unlike most gameplay, simulation, audio or rendering code, decompression needs to perform extra integrity checks to handle accidentally or maliciously corrupted data, and is thus likely to spot inconsistencies very soon after they occur. These decode failures then typically result in an error message.

The solution:

In the BIOS, if you have enabled any overclocking, please turn it off; do not use "AI" or "automatic" overclocking. Even if you have not explicitly enabled any overclocking, many BIOSes are doing some by default, so on affected machines you will have to find those settings and turn them off. Every BIOS has slightly different names for the settings; we cannot provide exact instructions of which settings to look for all of them. Some of these settings may be in the Advanced or Overclocking submenu of the BIOS.

  1. First look for settings to put the power limits and voltages of the processor into the Intel recommended safe ranges. You can find the correct limits for your processor at ark.intel.com. These might be:
    • "SVID behavior" → "Intel fail safe"
    • "Long duration power limit" → reduce to 125W if set higher ("Processor Base Power" on ARK)
    • "Short duration power limit" → reduce to 253W if set higher (for 13900/14900 CPUs, other CPUs have other limits! "Maximum Turbo Power" on ARK)
  2. If those don't work, another thing to look for is BIOS "enhanced turbo" or "enhanced multithreading" settings. For example:
    • "ASUS MultiCore Enhancement" → disabled (not Auto)
    • "ASUS Performance Enhancement 3.0" → disabled
  3. There have been reports of users finding stability by turning down the maximum clock rate. This can be done with BIOS settings or with Intel XTU. Some possibilities:
    • Turn down the maximum P core multiplier from 55X to 53X or 54X. (for example)
    • Turn down maximum turbo boost clock rate
    • Turn off or turn down "thermal velocity boost"

Note that many motherboard/BIOS settings turn on XMP (Extreme Memory Profile) by default with unstable settings that can cause similar symptoms. Instability due to XMP is a separate issue, but if you have instability problems, you may wish to also disable XMP and see if that helps.

Troubleshooting Update from Intel Corporation - Additional troubleshooting steps for ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI motherboards:

First, install Intel XTU and run the AVX2 test. If the AVX2 test failure is seen, try these options:

  1. For ASUS:

    Ask customer to change BIOS settings: Advanced (F7)- SVID Behavior: Change to "Intel's Fail Safe"

    Reboot the OS and run XTU test again and if the AVX2 test can pass. Run games and see if the issue happens again.
  2. For Gigabyte:

    Solution A): In BIOS, select "ADVANCED MODE", in the Tweaker tab, locate the CPU Vcore and select "Normal" option, select "Dynamic Vcore(DVID)" option, change it from "Auto" to "+0.005V" Increase the DVID by +0.005 and reboot OS, until the game crash disappears and the system is running stable.

    Solution B): In BIOS, select "Tweaker", select "Advanced Voltage Settings", select "CPU/VRAM Settings", adjust "CPU Vcore Loadline Calibration", recommend starting from "Low" to "Medium" until system is stable.

    After implementing solution A or B, run the XTU test again and if the AVX2 test can pass. Run games and see if the issue happens again.
  3. For MSI:

    Solution A): In BIOS, select "OC", select "CPU Core Voltage Mode", select "Offset Mode", select "+(By PWM)", adjust the voltage until the system is stable, recommend not to exceed 0.025V for a single increase.

    Solution B): In BIOS, select "OC", select "DigitALL Power", change "CPU Loadline Calibration Control", recommend starting from "Mode 7" to a lower value until system is stable.

    After implementing solution A or B, run the XTU test again and if the AVX2 test can pass. Run games and see if the issue happens again.
 

winjer

Gold Member
So they are instable at stock? LOL.

Who could have guessed that shoving such high clocks and power into a CPU could have consequences....

giphy.gif
 
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GHG

Member
Who could have guessed that shoving such high clocks and power into a CPU could have consequences....

giphy.gif

Having done a lot of research on current CPU's over the last couple of weeks I've come to the conclusion that the current batch of Intel CPU's are essentially factory overclocked CPU's masquerading as "stock". All of the undervolting tests and benchmarks out there point towards this being the case. In some circumstances you can drop the power limit by 50% and only experience a ~5% drop in performance.

They have done everything they can to milk the 1700 socket for all its worth.
 

HeWhoWalks

Gold Member
I would say "Oh no.....anyway", but I'm a 13900K, soon to be a 14900KS, owner.

So.... oh no! Of course, I knew this already, because only UE games (particularly UE4) have ever given me consistent crashing problems!
 

winjer

Gold Member
Having done a lot of research on current CPU's over the last couple of weeks I've come to the conclusion that the current batch of Intel CPU's are essentially factory overclocked CPU's masquerading as "stock". All of the undervolting tests and benchmarks out there point towards this being the case. In some circumstances you can drop the power limit by 50% and only experience a ~5% drop in performance.

They have done everything they can to milk the 1700 socket for all its worth.

Yes.
One thing that Intel an Motherboard manufacturers are doing is not to adhere to Intel's own power limit specifications, as to extract as much performance as possible.
Admittedly, AMD does a similar thing. For example, on AMD enabling the Eco Mode can save a lot of power and reduce temperatures for a small impact to performance. But AMD and motherboards maker, usually set this to default to off.
 
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I haven't run into this issue with my 13700K, purchased on release day and running bone stock since day 1. This new development has turned me off of future overclocking though
 

Magic Carpet

Gold Member
Had to look up Oodle Deompression is and its about loading files. I seem to remember hearing that GPU's were going to be doing this. Did that not go anywhere?
 

winjer

Gold Member
Had to look up Oodle Deompression is and its about loading files. I seem to remember hearing that GPU's were going to be doing this. Did that not go anywhere?

It can be done on the CPU, or the GPU, with games that support Direct Storage, and on specific IO controllers, such as in the PS5.
 

OverHeat

« generous god »

Three

Gold Member
These are the things that give PC gaming a bad name regarding tinkering with bios and drivers. Sort your shit out Intel.
 
Decompression can be pretty demanding for the CPU. I've had my otherwise stable OC 13600K fail some decompression tasks. Took a while to figure out it was the overclock since it didn't really crash, just error out the decompression. Not surprised the higher end models might do it at stock in some case.
 

rm082e

Member
I think some people are still institutionalized from the decade plus where Intel was the only logical option for CPUs. One of my co-workers has always used Intel and is looking to upgrade from a 10700k for gaming. He called me recently to ask how my experience has been with AMD. Having been on Ryzen since the 2000 series, I was a little puzzled - like "what issues are you imagining?". I had to assure him I've seen zero difference between the two brands.

It seems like maybe there's a bit of guilt by association that AMD video cards playing second fiddle to Nvidia must mean the AMD CPUs play second fiddle to Intel? That's just not the case.

I hope Intel gets a new architecture out there eventually that can better compete with AMD. I won't shit talk or hate on them, just like I didn't hate on AMD during the Bulldozer days. But until they do, there are very few scenarios where it makes sense to go with Intel. For gaming, the X3D chips are just too good.
 

simpatico

Member
So they are instable at stock? LOL.
Intel stock, they seem stable. At the motherboard mfg "stock" they could be unstable. The instructions basically say to disable motherboard mfgs "stock" overclocking/volting. Mobo makers are getting really squirrely recently in terms of what should constitute "stock" or "default" settings.
 

Nvzman

Member
Who still buys Intel?


A2ZajwV.jpg
Intel's CPUs are significantly better than what AMD is offering until you get to the X3D range. X3D (and even then its just the 7800x3D and 7950x3D) is literally the only compelling AMD chips at the moment, everything else gets completely washed in price to performance by Intel.
And the efficiency of Raptor Lake is actually not bad when underclocking or undervolting, its just that the out-the-box power consumption is really nasty.
Additionally, with AMD chips now deliberately maxxing out thermals for performance (even though the power consumption is lower than the Intel equivalents), this joke doesn't even make sense, as AM5 chips are designed to stay at max possible temps.
 
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Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Had to look up Oodle Deompression is and its about loading files. I seem to remember hearing that GPU's were going to be doing this. Did that not go anywhere?
It did - but GPUs have driver issues with this - as usual. Also PC hardware tail is 7-10 years before anything can reasonably be deprecated, so that's pretty much the minimum before GPU decoding could be made 'default' option (could be longer depending on the game).
 

simpatico

Member
A lot of the AMD benchmarks posted here are a little misleading. I just bought a 7800x3D and it's not without it's warts. My fans spin up downloading Steam games. The perf is great but the approach is a bit inelegant. Intel isn't doing any better though, but the 13/14 series isn't getting washed in modern stuff the way those charts would suggest. A lot of games in those standard issue benchmarking suites are old. F1 22, Shadow of Tomb Raider. tech outlets pls. Certain games just love the 3d cache too, and they are somewhat far and few between in the big pool of games, but they're a bit over represented in those suites. Obviously I'm hoping more games make use of it with my investment, but during my research before buying it was a lot closer than some people are making it out to be. With even some things going the way of intel, like 1% and 0.1% lows on ultra modern stuff. Ultimately it was total power draw that pulled me to AMD, that and a brand new socket that I could potentially upgrade down the line.
 
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simpatico

Member
I think this vid from JaysTwoCents seems relevant to this.
Motherboard manufacturers default settings have no limit so the cpu will request more voltage and power draw than it is supposed to.

For Intel and AMD. Remember the toasty 7800x3Ds at launch? This to me is a mobo problem more than a CPU problem. The modern CPU philosophy of pushing it to the absolute limit at stock is making it easier for mobo mfgs to push it too far. Plenty of blame to go around to all parties involved imo.
 

StereoVsn

Gold Member
A lot of the AMD benchmarks posted here are a little misleading. I just bought a 7800x3D and it's not without it's warts. My fans spin up downloading Steam games. The perf is great but the approach is a bit inelegant. Intel isn't doing any better though, but the 13/14 series isn't getting washed in modern stuff the way those charts would suggest. A lot of games in those standard issue benchmarking suites are old. F1 22, Shadow of Tomb Raider. tech outlets pls. Certain games just love the 3d cache too, and they are somewhat far and few between in the big pool of games, but they're a bit over represented in those suites. Obviously I'm hoping more games make use of it with my investment, but during my research before buying it was a lot closer than some people are making it out to be. With even some things going the way of intel, like 1% and 0.1% lows on ultra modern stuff. Ultimately it was total power draw that pulled me to AMD, that and a brand new socket that I could potentially upgrade down the line.
Yep, plus there were whole lot of issues soon after launch with motherboard manufacturers and their RAM over-volting.
 

winjer

Gold Member
A lot of the AMD benchmarks posted here are a little misleading. I just bought a 7800x3D and it's not without it's warts. My fans spin up downloading Steam games. The perf is great but the approach is a bit inelegant. Intel isn't doing any better though, but the 13/14 series isn't getting washed in modern stuff the way those charts would suggest. A lot of games in those standard issue benchmarking suites are old. F1 22, Shadow of Tomb Raider. tech outlets pls. Certain games just love the 3d cache too, and they are somewhat far and few between in the big pool of games, but they're a bit over represented in those suites. Obviously I'm hoping more games make use of it with my investment, but during my research before buying it was a lot closer than some people are making it out to be. With even some things going the way of intel, like 1% and 0.1% lows on ultra modern stuff. Ultimately it was total power draw that pulled me to AMD, that and a brand new socket that I could potentially upgrade down the line.

You know that you can change the fan curve to suit your needs.
Most motherboards even have a few presets available.
And check that the motherboard is using PWM control for the fans.
 

simpatico

Member
You know that you can change the fan curve to suit your needs.
Most motherboards even have a few presets available.
And check that the motherboard is using PWM control for the fans.
I have. Doesn’t help on big downloads. The race to 90c the AM5s do just overcomes it eventually.
 

Soodanim

Member
A lot of the AMD benchmarks posted here are a little misleading. I just bought a 7800x3D and it's not without it's warts. My fans spin up downloading Steam games. The perf is great but the approach is a bit inelegant. Intel isn't doing any better though, but the 13/14 series isn't getting washed in modern stuff the way those charts would suggest. A lot of games in those standard issue benchmarking suites are old. F1 22, Shadow of Tomb Raider. tech outlets pls. Certain games just love the 3d cache too, and they are somewhat far and few between in the big pool of games, but they're a bit over represented in those suites. Obviously I'm hoping more games make use of it with my investment, but during my research before buying it was a lot closer than some people are making it out to be. With even some things going the way of intel, like 1% and 0.1% lows on ultra modern stuff. Ultimately it was total power draw that pulled me to AMD, that and a brand new socket that I could potentially upgrade down the line.
I appreciate this sort of feedback as I'm looking to build something new at some point this year. I'll be going AMD regardless, but my 4690k has barely ever made an audible sound (at least not more than my GPU) so that changing would have been a big surprise without warning.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Intel's CPUs are significantly better than what AMD is offering until you get to the X3D range. X3D (and even then its just the 7800x3D and 7950x3D) is literally the only compelling AMD chips at the moment, everything else gets completely washed in price to performance by Intel.
And the efficiency of Raptor Lake is actually not bad when underclocking or undervolting, its just that the out-the-box power consumption is really nasty.
Additionally, with AMD chips now deliberately maxxing out thermals for performance (even though the power consumption is lower than the Intel equivalents), this joke doesn't even make sense, as AM5 chips are designed to stay at max possible temps.
This is complete and utter bullshit. They're neck and neck in most apps even for the non-X3D variants. With AMD you still get significant advantages in power efficiency.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
You know that you can change the fan curve to suit your needs.
Most motherboards even have a few presets available.
And check that the motherboard is using PWM control for the fans.
Yeah, if you set the non-X3D versions to a -30 offset. Things that would run at the 90C get down to the 60C. That's the best case scenario.

When I had the 7700X, I had a -30 all core offset, Max wattage of 85W, Max temp of 85C and at full load I got at most 65C. Tuning is available.

However, for those that don't want to deal with that, there are options to set the max power draw to 65W and get drastically lower temps with little performance loss on an 8-core CPU.
 

sigmaZ

Member
For people having problems with some games using Unreal Engine, be it developers or users, the issue might be clock rates and power usage too high, due to some UEFI settings.




The solution:
Oh. I think this is the problem I was having last year where game kept crashing like crazy and then I switched the BIOS setting to fix it.
 

simpatico

Member
90ºc downloading games from Steam is not normal.
Is your cooler mounted properly? Do you have good airflow?
I don’t reach 90. I don’t even really break 70 by much. Maybe it’s my cooler. I did cheap out with a Deep Cool ak620 rather than the proper Noctua.

I’m coming off an i7 6700k, which I think is like a 75w part. Maybe it’s normal noise level with modern CPUs.
 

winjer

Gold Member
I don’t reach 90. I don’t even really break 70 by much. Maybe it’s my cooler. I did cheap out with a Deep Cool ak620 rather than the proper Noctua.

I’m coming off an i7 6700k, which I think is like a 75w part. Maybe it’s normal noise level with modern CPUs.

Then it's normal.
Remember that downloading a game on Steam, means decompressing a lot of data. Especially if you have a fast internet connection.
 
The bell is finally tolling. We are at the end of the road here. Go back to the 90s and 00s and take a look at what gen over gen gains looked like. Now compare Intel gains over the last decade. It's pathetic. Single digit IPC and click speed percentage gains. Performance is stagnating. It's all because of the wall we're running into with transistor size shrinkage. We can't shrink infinitely, there is a physical limit and we're right near it. It's utterly depressing to see this is the end. This is all we can look forward to. I'll be completely surprised if a decade from now we see any breakthrough massive CPU upgrades.
 
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