Many PC gamers have been waiting with bated breath for a real remedy to Intel's 13th and 14th generation instability problem. After months of reports, investigations, and workarounds, in July Intel finally figured out the problem and announced that it would roll out a BIOS microcode fix in mid-August. It now appears that the first of these has been officially released by MSI and Asus.

MSI reports that it will release a BIOS update for Intel 600 and 700 series motherboards with the 0x129 microcode update to "mitigate instability.

In addition, the 0x129 BIOS update is available on the Asus ROG forum for Asus motherboard users to download, but it is not yet listed on the official support page like MSI's update.

Previous interim 0x125 updates deployed by motherboard vendors tinkered with voltages, particularly the eTVB (enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost) setting, to keep things safe until a root cause fix was provided. This latest 0x129 microcode update is supposed to fix the root cause.

The "first batch" of motherboards for which MSI has rolled out the latest BIOS update is as follows:

But if your motherboard is not on this list, don't worry: according to MSI, all 600-series and 700 series motherboards will receive a BIOS update "by the end of August.

To check if your motherboard has received the update, visit the official msi.com page and go to Support -> Drivers & Downloads -> Firmware/BIOS.

It is not yet confirmed what exactly this microcode update does, only that it probably fixes the root cause of the instability problem, "increased operating voltage."

Unfortunately, however, this microcode cannot undo the damage already caused by the voltage increase in the affected CPUs. In such a case, the currently extended warranty would be used.

We will be testing the 0x129 microcode update ourselves and will let you know how it affects the latest high-end Intel CPUs as soon as we finish testing.