Gigabyte’s heavy-handed fix for Intel Core i9 CPU instability drops performance to Core i7 levels in some cases – but don’t panic yet

Gigabyte is the latest motherboard maker to respond to the problems around Intel’s Core i9 processors crashing with PC games, but it seems like the company may have overreacted in its efforts to cure these stability issues.

The BIOS update Gigabyte has deployed tackles the specter of crashing by dropping certain power limits, the problem being that the performance of the affected 13th-gen and 14th-gen Core i9 CPUs is seriously hampered by the fix.

The motherboard vendor announced: “Gigabyte … released the latest beta BIOS with Intel Baseline feature on Z790, B760 series motherboards for enhanced stability, regarding the feedback from Intel that high power consumption settings may cause system instability with 13/14th generation CPUs.”

The mentioned new ‘Intel Baseline’ setting limits the power that can be supplied to boost the processor to a considerably lower amount than the default setting previously did, as implemented by Gigabyte on these ...