Game developer issues warning about Intel's fastest gaming chips - downclock Core i9 flagships to avoid crashes in Outpost Infinity Seige.

Outpost: Infinity Siege
(Image credit: Steam)

Recently released title Outpost: Infinity Siege just got its second patch in a matter of days rectifying certain crashes during cutscenes. However, the developerss revealed in the patch notes that there are still high-priority issues causing severe crashes and screen blackouts in-game. The issues are bad enough that the developers at Team Ranger are recommending users downclock their Core i9 Raptor Lake or Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs to 5 GHz as a temporary measure.

The recommended mitigations don't stop there. On top of the clock speed workaround, the developers recommend gamers switch power settings to energy-saving mode on appropriate hardware. The Outpost: Infinity Siege team also recommends verifying file integrity in Steam and updating graphics drivers, but these are not unusual recommendations for rectifying game instability.

If you check out the game's Steam page and Steam sub-forum, it won't take you long to discover that there are a lot of issues with the game. The game's comment section and forum are loaded with complaints about Outpost performance and instability. One example as reported by Game Pressure comes in the form of Out of Video memory Error crashes which the outlet says happens frequently in-game.

These issues appear to be even worse than other games that have received poor reception at launch, including Jedi: Survivor. That game had an absolutely abysmal performance at launch and was also subject to frequent instability.

Could Power Limits be another culprit?

Even though there is a lot of evidence pointing towards the game being the problem. The developer's recommendation to reduce clock speeds on certain Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs might be a problem with Intel's hardware specifically — rather than the game itself. A month ago, we reported on a serious issue related to Intel Raptor Lake CPUs (and by extension 14th Gen CPUs) where the default power limits on most Raptor Lake-supported boards were causing instability in certain games.

We found this problem is very legitimate and was also affecting our GPU review Jarred Walton in several games including Alan Wake 2, Hogwarts Legacy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Immortals of Aveum, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, and The Last of Us, Part 1. 

The problem boils down to how the power limits in BIOS are set automatically for most Raptor Lake-supported boards. Nearly all compatible motherboards automatically ramp up the power limit to 4096W (i.e infinity) to prevent any sort of performance loss from power throttling. This improves performance, but technically this is not actually within official officiations of the chip. This can, unfortunately, lead to application instability in some cases, depending on silicon quality.

It is possible, but not guaranteed, that this is another culprit causing instability in Outpost: Infinity Siege. The fact that the developers targeted the i9-13900K and i9-14900K specifically backs up this theory even more since those two CPUs consume the most amount of power (and generate the most amount of heat) compared to their i7 and i5 contemporaries and are more susceptible to the issue.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • Dementoss
    Take it away, bring it back when it's finished...
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    The developer's recommendation to reduce clock speeds on certain Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs might be a problem with Intel's hardware specifically

    The problem boils down to how the power limits in BIOS are set automatically for most Raptor Lake-supported boards. Nearly all compatible motherboards automatically ramp up the power limit to 4096W (i.e infinity) to prevent any sort of performance loss from power throttling. This improves performance, but technically this is not actually within official officiations of the chip.

    So you, and by extension TomsHardware, is blaming Intel for a problem in a game where the cause is the motherboard manufacturer setting the power limit out of Intel's spec even though you state the problem is with the motherboard?
    Reply
  • 35below0
    "Your top gun CPU is so great at computing it actually causes games to not compute" :unsure:

    I'll have to go jogging late at night, and hopefully hit my head on a few low hanging branches. Maybe then it will make sense.
    Reply
  • vanadiel007
    Wanted:" Roast to put in oven.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    So you, and by extension TomsHardware, is blaming Intel for a problem in a game where the cause is the motherboard manufacturer setting the power limit out of Intel's spec even though you state the problem is with the motherboard?
    Yes as the stance Tom's editorial seems to be taking on this is because many enthusiast boards run this way and Intel will still cover the warranty this is an Intel problem. All of their Intel CPU tests are only run with unlimited power without any note regarding potential problems despite the fact that the Tom's GPU reviewer has run into these issues.
    Reply
  • ezst036
    Admin said:
    Outpost: Infinity Siege is facing stability issues. The game's problems are so bad that the devs are asking Intel Core i9-13900K and 14900K owners to downclock their chips so they can play the game without crashing.

    No. It's not up to us to modify our hardware/settings to accommodate you.

    It's up to you to fix your software. If you want us to fix it, release your source code. JUST the source code, you don't have to release the artwork and other supporting media files.

    That's the middle ground. Release the core source. You don't want to fix it, well, don't bother us until your work is done.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    is blaming Intel for a problem in a game where the cause is the motherboard manufacturer setting the power limit out of Intel's spec even though you state the problem is with the motherboard?
    they say intel hardware due to MB's bios.

    They arent blaming Intel themself just their hardware under control of the bios.

    ezst036 said:
    It's not up to us to modify our hardware/settings to accommodate you.
    ngl thats a bad take.

    Unlike consoles every PC, even if its got same parts list down to the screws, can vary system to system.

    Some people actually HAVE to modify their system to make them truly stable (and not just seemingly stable).

    Should a game need you to change system to play? ideally not but it isnt first time however its nothing unheard of.
    Reply
  • karma77police
    That is just bollocks. No reason to downclock the CPU here at all (14900k owner). I am not sure where they tested this game but this is completely incorrect. I can run Cinebench R23 and run any game at the same time, it runs fine. I have never seen a CPU running over 48C on any games including Cyberpunk 2077 and I doubt this game is more demanding than Cyberpunk 2077 which can pull a lot of power. And my power in the motherboard is set to unlimited. In general AMD CPUs run hotter in gaming than 13900k/14900k. As I said someone misinterpreted this or dev has a terrible setup they run on it. Please someone tell them not to run CPU with no cooling or Intel OEM cooling of $5.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Team Ranger says they are deeply sorry ...
    15HTd4Um1m4View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    thestryker said:
    Yes as the stance Tom's editorial seems to be taking on this is because many enthusiast boards run this way and Intel will still cover the warranty this is an Intel problem. All of their Intel CPU tests are only run with unlimited power without any note regarding potential problems despite the fact that the Tom's GPU reviewer has run into these issues.
    This is a problem with some 13900K and 14900K CPUs. My CPU was affected, Paul's was not. I have only tested my CPU in a single motherboard, so I can't even say for certain that the problem is the CPU — it could be the motherboard. Tweaking the power limits to run at "Intel's actual stock settings" has cleared up my issues, again indicating that it's probably a motherboard BIOS settings issue for a lot of people.

    Also worth noting is that the 13900K/14900K don't current rank our our list of the best CPUs, for a variety of reasons. The lower tier Raptor Lake chips are there, but not the Core i9. This has been the case for a while now.

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