Asmongold and Gamers Nexus Collaborate to Slice Faulty CPU in Half with Ion Beam

YouTuber Asmongold shared his frustration regarding an ongoing shader problem in Black Myth: Wukong. In response, fellow YouTubers GamersNexus have offered to use an ion beam to diagnose the issue.

GamersNexus reached out to Asmongold on Twitter/X, stating that they had noticed the shader issues he was facing and believed it could be due to chip degradation.

To thoroughly diagnose the issue, GamersNexus would conduct a series of tests on the suspected CPU. This would involve conducting non-destructive tests initially, followed by more intense methods like cross-sectioning and ion beam analysis. The latter tests would require the CPU to be cut into multiple pieces.

Asmongold stated his plan to buy a new CPU and send the old one to GamersNexus for a thorough analysis.

.@OTKnetwork @Asmongold Saw the shader issue in Wukong. Can we cut your CPU in half with a focused ion beam to try and identify the hardware failure? It has the exact failure profile we’re looking for in these chips for failure analysis. Looks like chip degradation.

— GamersNexus (@GamersNexus) August 21, 2024

The Twitter post stated that GamersNexus believes the issue to be linked to the current instability problems with Intel’s 13th and 14th-generation processors. Intel has acknowledged that these problems are caused by defective microcode and have resulted in various problems for users, such as decreased gaming performance and frequent crashes.

During the benchmarking tests for Black Myth: Wukong, we faced difficulties while using our test bench PC equipped with an Intel core i5-13600K CPU. The game crashed at least twice on this PC, but remained stable on other devices such as the Steam Deck.

Intel has recently launched the beta version of its microcode update, which they are confident will address the stability issues.

It is widely believed by analysts and users alike that certain CPUs may already be too damaged to benefit from the fix. This theory could potentially be confirmed by the GamersNexus tests.