Intel's well-documented issues with its high-end 13th and 14th generation CPUs crashing or being generally unstable with PC gaming could cast a shadow over sales of the company's next-generation Arrow Lake CPUs.
Or it's a motherboard manufacturer's warning following the ongoing saga that has dragged on throughout this year, with complaints from Core i9 processor owners and various advice from Intel, including recommended settings for mitigation and a recent fix for the BIOS. (The latter fixed a bug in the microcode of these CPUs' Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost feature, which Team Blue admitted could contribute to the crash issues.)
Anyway, Wccftech reports that ZDNet in Korea has spoken to a representative from an unnamed motherboard manufacturer who, under the protection of anonymity, expressed concerns about how this whole episode could affect Intel's next-generation desktop CPU sales.
They are quoted as saying: “If the stability issue is not clearly resolved, consumer distrust will increase and sales of 'Arrow Lake,' a new desktop PC processor that Intel plans to launch in the fourth quarter, will decline.”
Analysis: The danger of a tainted perception for Intel
Obviously, we should take this report with a grain of salt, but is this revelation really surprising? We would say no, although what is surprising, or certainly unusual, is that a motherboard manufacturer has made such a statement (to add insult to injury, as has already been said) underscoring the seriousness of the situation as it has developed. .
In fact, we're hard-pressed to remember a more confusing and thorny hardware problem in recent PC history. Blame has been pointed out here and there, while gamers who have spent a lot of money on high-end chips have suffered glitches that have undoubtedly been very frustrating.
While the issue has been resolved somewhat, the root causes have yet to be precisely identified, and the mentioned mitigations come with a performance trade-off that enthusiasts who buy Intel Core i9 desktop processors won't be happy with at all. Though it's clear that dropping a few frames is a better alternative to persistent instability when gaming.
So, with this in mind, is it credible that this debacle could dent the computing public's confidence in Intel CPUs? We believe it is possible and, logically, if Intel does not find a definitive solution relatively soon, this could raise questions for those looking at Arrow Lake for a next-generation CPU.
While not everyone has been affected by these gremlins, the complaints are numerous enough that the controversy will no doubt have been registered. And while Arrow Lake is a very different beast to Intel’s current Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs (and it looks like it will reduce power consumption to a more moderate level, anyway), that probably won’t matter to the average PC buyer. Regardless of the relative power consumption figures, the danger is that they will simply have heard comments along the lines of “well, don’t buy Intel, they’re unstable” or similar sentiments, which could be quite damaging to Team Blue.
We'll see, but Intel is already at a disadvantage in the battle for the best next-gen CPUs, given that Ryzen 9000 CPUs are now imminent, and there's even a chance that AMD's 9000X3D models, which will be great for gamers, could appear before Arrow Lake later in 2024 (or at least around the same time).
