MSI Releases Fix For Skylake Bug Causing Instability

Intel’s Skylake architecture has received a barrage of negative publicity after reports suggested the CPUs could bend under the weight of high pressure coolers and now, a bug was discovered during intensive workloads which causes the system to freeze. The root cause of this is hyperthreading and the use of CPUsupportsFMA3. Intel responded to the claims with an official statement which reads:

“Intel has identified an issue that potentially affects the 6th Gen Intel® Core™ family of products.  This issue only occurs under certain complex workload conditions, like those that may be encountered when running applications like Prime95.  In those cases, the processor may hang or cause unpredictable system behavior.  Intel has identified and released a fix and is working with external business partners to get the fix deployed through BIOS.”

Thankfully, MSI has released a very swift BIOS update to eradicate the issue although this only covers the Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM and Z170A GAMING M7 so far. However, the rest of MSI’s Skylake line-up will receive a fix pretty soon and be avaliable via MSI’s website. Please note, if you desperately need to apply the latest BIOS now for either the Z170A XPOWER GAMING TITANIUM and Z170A GAMING M7, navigate to this page.

Clearly, Intel’s latest release hasn’t gone as smoothly as the company expected, and issues have arisen which could deter consumers from upgrading. Despite this, it’s great to see such a fast response to any technical problems and helps to reassure users that Skylake is a worthwhile investment. Customer service is key in the technology industry, and once again MSI is displaying their commitment to providing the best communication possible. It will be interesting to see if any other technical problems arise from Skylake, but it’s important to remember that the freezing bug only really comes into play during extreme stress workloads.