Hi Titanfall fans! Welcome to the blog post from Respawn Entertainment and Gravity Well about Titanfall 3!
But here's the bad news in this month, the Intel CPU controversy affecting not just Titanfall 3, but also all games, every software applications including ones used on development of our game, and even operating systems other than the entire Microsoft Windows family of OSes on these systems using these "knwon problematic" CPUs.
Team Blue's Red Ring of Death[]
Remember the good old Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death hardware issue?
We don't think that it is an issue with the game itself, nor the drivers, not even bugs in Windows kernel itself that results in instability problems when playing Titanfall 3 on PCs equipped with 13th or 14th gen (Raptor Lake) Intel CPUs, rather it is something worse; a hardware problem affecting all Intel CPUs within "Raptor Lake" series, further exacerbated by microcode glitch in eTVB part (which was patched) that results in dangerous voltage values that led to accelerated degradation, so bad that it is best described to be an reincarnation of Xbox 360's Red Ring of Death problems but for PC gaming and/or Team Blue and what's worse is that it also affect Linux-based systems running on these processors.
Since it is likely a hardware problem, we don't believe that neither 13th nor 14th gen CPUs will be truly "fixed" aside some workarounds, at least without revising the physical hardware, which means that only time will tell whether or not the upcoming 15th gen (Arrow Lake) series of Intel CPUs will have this problem resolved (or in other words doesn't have the similar instability controversy).
Clarifications on this controversy[]
We clarified that our analogy to Xbox 360's RRoD problems are flawed (which should be obvious to any tech-savvy person) as while it shares some similarities between two technical controversies; in the case Intel's CPU instability controversy, the problem is silicon degradation in which there is oxidation on the CPU itself resulting in instabilities and you can't fix it (therefore RMA or a recall is needed for these cases), and in the case of Xbox 360's RRoD problems (which has occurred in the past), which involves cracking of solder balls (thus broken connection, resulting in RRoD) and can be temporarily resolved by re-heating the entire console just for hope that RRoD goes away.
Also, it seems that overly-aggressive undervolting is the reason for most instabilities and crash-and-burn cases on our list of recent problematic CPUs as JayTwoCents pointed out on his video on this controversy.
Any questions[]
Leave a comment for questions and concerns. Constructive criticisms are appreciated.
Please note that if you're suffering instabilities (not just our Titanfall 3, but also on other games including non-Unreal Engine games and even Linux operating systems) on systems running on 13th and 14th gen Intel CPUs, you should contact Intel instead for RMA (if your "problematic" CPU hasn't becoming out-of-warranty) if you're still experiencing instabilities even after BIOS and microcode updates.