23/05/2025
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.
This video shows how to install Intel® microcode 0x12B fix (also 0x12F), which also incorporates earlier updates to address elevated voltage requests during ...