Intel Chipset Design Error!!!

cdolphin said:
I would really love to have a new motherboard sometime soon, hope this is cleared up relatively quickly
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You have two basic choices:

1) Wait until maybe June for a Sandy Bridge solution.
2) Pick something else.

Not to excited about "something else" when you have seen Sandy Bridge? I don't blame you at all. That's why I bought one two weeks ago and would buy another today.

I expect Intel will do something (like cut deals) to make your close in buying decision easier.
 
pa-fun said:
If you listen to the Intel conferance call, they are planning to sell more older CPU's this quarter to make up the "gap" caused by Sandy Bridge dropping out. Having the channel dry up woud make that imposible. Basic math is $300 M drop in sales (with all Sandy Bridge gone) typical quarter is $11 B. Most of their sales are CPU's.

Best guess - look for some *great* deals on Intel motherboards and processors in the next couple months. With Sandy Bridge getting the buz, they are going to have to do something to keep sales going.

For the OEM's it's a push a button sort of thing, can't build this, build that. I'm sure Intel is writing them some checks (or discount coupons) to make that less of a pain. The quick turn item there are the motherboards, not quite so much for laptops. Since they need sales, the easy bet would be motherboards.

It's fire sale time !!!
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I think you are missing my point.. you can't just push a button and instantly have more AMD or Intel 5-series motherboards. The manufacturing resources are limited, and for months now a substantial portion of those resources was making 6-series product that just got pulled from the pipeline. There is nothing immediately available to replace that. And with increased demand for 5-series motherboards, why the hell would you discount them in order to move them? You don't need to, they are suddenly the only game in town for building intel based systems. Same deal goes for the processors with the exception that the SB processors didn't get pulled, it's just that there's no way to use them till we get new motherboards
 
Tempus said:
There is nothing immediately available to replace that. And with increased demand for 5-series motherboards, why the hell would you discount them in order to move them? You don't need to, they are suddenly the only game in town for building intel based systems. Same deal goes for the processors with the exception that the SB processors didn't get pulled, it's just that there's no way to use them till we get new motherboards
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Funny how it works out that way:)
 
pa-fun said:
Yes indeed, stuff like optical drives are a good thing to move to the SATA 2 ports if you have run out of STAT 3 ports. You may see a problem, but you should be able to take action before it hoses you.
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Thanks! Still looking forward to setting up this machine then, and only downside will be replacing the board at some point.
 
Elledan said:
Yeah, until I see a number of tech sites like [H]ardOCP report on it I'll take it with a few canisters of salt :)
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While it is true that the wiki is dubious, checking out that source link within wiki makes more sense. The progression between 1155, 1355 and 2011 is logical and follows the same progression from 1156, 1366 and the server 1366. I'd say that one is somewhat good enough.
 
Tempus said:
I think you are missing my point.. you can't just push a button and instantly have more AMD or Intel 5-series motherboards. The manufacturing resources are limited, and for months now a substantial portion of those resources was making 6-series product that just got pulled from the pipeline. There is nothing immediately available to replace that. And with increased demand for 5-series motherboards, why the hell would you discount them in order to move them? You don't need to, they are suddenly the only game in town for building intel based systems. Same deal goes for the processors with the exception that the SB processors didn't get pulled, it's just that there's no way to use them till we get new motherboards
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Intel's sales projections for Sandy Bridge were not all that crazy in the first quarter. I don't see any indication that a massive shift in manufacturing had already taken place. They only got 100,000 boards out to the field and most of the retailers ran dry pretty fast. That looks a lot more like pilot run production than anything else.

Indeed you can turn a modern factory with the push of a button. Ramping up what is already tooled and running by 20 or even 50 % is a very normal thing to do in a couple of weeks time. We do it here all the time. All the machines that were building Sandy Bridge yesterday are sitting idle today. It's just a matter of moving different parts over to them. Change over the line in maybe 8 hours, certainly not more than a day.

If kit to ship time on a typical running motherboard is over a few hours they are doing something wrong. As competitive as the business is, the guys that do it wrong are gone pretty soon. When I look at date codes on most running production boards I get, there's no more than 2 weeks between when the components on the board were made and I got the board from Newegg. I do indeed find that pretty crazy, the old days were not like that. Welcome to the modern world.

Filling the hole with "old product" is not all that hard.
 
Microcenter sent an e-mail to those who bought SB setups from them:

eNews Update: Important Information
Micro Center: computers & electronics

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

An Important Announcement regarding Intel(r) Series 6 Chipsets

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Intel has recently identified an issue with their 6 series chipsets,
which are used with all their 2nd generation Core processors
(code-named Sandy Bridge). This is a potentially serious issue, but it
should not affect your data, just your system's performance. Intel believes
that consumers can continue to use their systems with confidence, while
working with their computer manufacturer for a permanent solution.

However, some users may see degradation in the performance of SATA
devices attached to the system, whether internal or external (such as hard
drives and DVD drives). Intel is not aware of any end-user who has seen this
issue yet, but they expect it to affect a significant percentage of users
eventually, and to worsen over a three year period.

Please be assured that Micro Center will stand behind every customer who
purchased a system or a motherboard from us that features this chipset.
Intel has already made the necessary change in the manufacturing process
to correct the error, and properly functioning replacements will be available
in approximately 8 weeks.

To minimize the disruption to you, we suggest that you continue to use your
system until replacement parts are available. At that time, we will contact
you with instructions regarding how to get your motherboard replaced or your
system repaired.

PLEASE NOTE: There is no problem with the Intel 2nd Generation Core Processors themselves.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused by this issue,
and our assurance that we will keep you informed of any further developments.

For additional information, please visit:
http://l2.microcentermail.com/C2L/jj.aspx?pid=uy5qnqzHiLU$&odid=PMpgFjGllv4$&sid=hltPWG6GLXhrcQURR_W3OA$$&aid=Uc6d0XfhsyY$&URL=L2_llqalf8u0lmZOPCD9jQSp2iq1TlfFq5LYuWhWhbNziLGEhph07cq5QNA_hbVhE3sm0x6p3g-kv5d-BVrQuSJXEOXUphh6LUnSh8ymFHiBSIxFBiRD3wkWbojB3dA6uakxP1xGU4dqKvxoDezOYVUFmEh2ePDxO-Kd1EPT5lxDVfd9Z2abjXlZ047aBiUO&
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jebo_4jc said:
Microcenter sent an e-mail to those who bought SB setups from them:
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Got that email too. Sounds like we will be able to take our boards to Microcenter when replacements arrive.


Microcenter said:
To minimize the disruption to you, we suggest that you continue to use your
system until replacement parts are available. At that time, we will contact
you with instructions regarding how to get your motherboard replaced or your
system repaired.
Click to expand...
 
I wish I had picked up a SB motherboard when I had a chance....I'd be happy to replace it later, I doubt it would fail before a replacement program was started.
 
I am going to take NewEgg up on their offer. Hopefully, they will let me return the other parts of my build as well. I can stick it out with my Q6600 a few more months, at which time there will be new SSDs available, a new chipset, and lower prices. Could I build it and then replace it with a fixed mobo? Yeah, but the hassle of dealing with all of it, combined with the future cost savings/new tech, has me leaning toward return.
 
uberartist said:
I wish I had picked up a SB motherboard when I had a chance....I'd be happy to replace it later, I doubt it would fail before a replacement program was started.
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Katalysis said:
I am going to take NewEgg up on their offer. Hopefully, they will let me return the other parts of my build as well. I can stick it out with my Q6600 a few more months, at which time there will be new SSDs available, a new chipset, and lower prices. Could I build it and then replace it with a fixed mobo? Yeah, but the hassle of dealing with all of it, combined with the future cost savings/new tech, has me leaning toward return.
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Looks like the two of you should get together and cut some sort of deal. Of course geting the replacement on a re-sold board might be a little bit of a hassle.
 
Man, I'm not looking forward to disassembling my whole build in a few months to put the new MB in. Oh well, such is the life of the builder.
 
I just rearranged all my ports, and enabled the Marvell. I have 4 HDDs and one optical. Now, only the optical drive is in the SATA 3Gbs port. Running bios 1204. Everything seems to be working great. I can live with this for the time being.
 
I hope Fry's Electronics (where I bought both CPU and Mobo) does something similar in vein to Microcenter. The only reason I'd go through the hastle of a return is primarily when I go to sell this setup -- any complications or explaining I'd save myself from.

I'm content with 2 HDDs on the SATA III ports and 1 DVDRW on the SATA II for however long it takes for another chip from Intel or AMD to pique my interest.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Thread should be titled [H]ard Forum goes [L]imp as people cry and possibly die over a chipset error that may or may not affect them. Since the [V]ast majority of OEM machines come with only 1 hdd and one optical drive that will most likely be hooked into the first 2 ports, it leads me to believe that this failure will be experienced by a very very small minority and Intel will not have much to worry about in the long run....
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And how many [H] readers are going to have only one HDD and one Optical drive these days when most who care about such things are building cutting edge performance rigs with at least one SSD, a HDD for data and an optical drive. If your chipset is flaky it will get you into trouble quick .

That's why it's a big deal.

Kind of like buying a Toyota early last year. You may or may not have it suddenly accelerate out of control. It was enough to have the biggest automotive recall in history. This is the geek version of that.
 
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jwalk6 said:
And how many [H] readers are going to have only one HDD and one Optical drive these days when most who care about such things are building cutting edge performance rigs with at least one SSD, a HDD for data and an optical drive. If your chipset is flaky it will get you into trouble quick .
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How many of the [H] are buying cheap boards with only 2 extra ports? The popular boards tend to have 4 usable ports that are unaffected.
 
Many at [H] like SFF (mATX, mITX) boards. My Gigabyte board has only two SATA III ports. The other four are SATA II.
 
jwalk6 said:
And how many [H] readers are going to have only one HDD and one Optical drive these days when most who care about such things are building cutting edge performance rigs with at least one SSD, a HDD for data and an optical drive. If your chipset is flaky it will get you into trouble quick .

That's why it's a big deal.

Kind of like buying a Toyota early last year. You may or may not have it suddenly accelerate out of control. It was enough to have the biggest automotive recall in history. This is the geek version of that.
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I must be the minority then. My build does not have SSD, not that I dont want one right now or not planning on getting one in the future but they're a little expensive for me right now. I am using 2 HD's and my optical though.
 
IsLNdbOi said:
Many at [H] like SFF (mATX, mITX) boards. My Gigabyte board has only two SATA III ports. The other four are SATA II.
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So you put your SSD and data drive on the sata 6g ports and the optical on the sata 3g port and call it a day. Then wait for a replacement. problem solved.

The only people that really need to worry about this are those with more than 2 hdds that are unable to use the sata 6g ports alone...
 
cicatriz63 said:
So you put your SSD and data drive on the sata 6g ports and the optical on the sata 3g port and call it a day. Then wait for a replacement. problem solved.

The only people that really need to worry about this are those with more than 2 hdds that are unable to use the sata 6g ports alone...
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this is the best solution, if you need more than 2 hdds you better by a good brand pci-e raid controller
 
Other than annoyance factor, did I miss something?

As I understand it, in 3 years time 5% of people might see degregated performance on the 3Gbps sata ports (the 6Gbps are fine). It's not that it will destroy whatever is attached to the ports, but that the ports will either not work well (or possibly quit working). Maybe i'm wrong on that?

SO. Either you keep on doing whatever you're doing normally, for the next 3 years. Or sometime over the next few months you have to swtich out a motherboard. Which is admitedly a pain... but not the end of the world. Worst case, they won't cross ship you a new one so you're out of pocket for a few days.

Even this is avoidable, get a refund, and in the meantime order a new one when they are available, no loss of downtime except for the actual board installation.

Am I missing anything else (other than that yes this is an unfortunate blow to early adopters)?
Btw, hitting 5Ghz is awesome! I love my 2600k
 
Huge, huge, huge black eye and debacle for Intel. Who is going to pay to replace the motherboards of people that had places like geek squad, etc install it for them? Who is going to pay for return shipping of boards or onsite techs to come out and swap out boards of machines that were bought at microcenter type places? Who is going to pay for the precious time of each of us who have the skills to replace our boards and reroute wires and retroubleshoot and tweak settings? A lot of these questions have yet to be answered and still need to be. April before the new parts are available?? So SB is effectively a dead architecture for the next 3 months?? What about all of those old busted parts for sale on ebay or some other site where you won't know what you got until later when it fails? I know some of you guys think this is a non-issue but this is HUGE imo. It's a mockery of Intel.

This architecture was cursed from the get go. Just a random peruse of hardware forums and newegg reviews is a veritable horror show with regard to those boards, memory compatibility problems, cold boot problems, etc. I figured something was very wrong right away after reading the newegg reviews. When it works it works great but there are a lot more issues with SB architectures than there ever were for core2, corei7, etc. I should know since I always update every time a new architecture comes out. I had decided to wait until March or April until problems were worked out of these boards and new BIOS' were released. Glad I did.
 
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You can also Buy E-Sata to SATA cables and route them back into your case and use the Jmicron or Marvell Chips if you have a Pro Board. That should give you another couple ports for only a few bucks investment.
 
Astrodave said:
Huge, huge, huge black eye and debacle for Intel. Who is going to pay to replace the motherboards of people that had places like geek squad, etc install it for them? Who is going to pay for return shipping of boards or onsite techs to come out and swap out boards of machines that were bought at microcenter type places? A lot of these questions have yet to be answered and still need to be. April before the new parts are available?? So SB is effectively a dead architecture for the next 3 months?? What about all of those old busted parts for sale on ebay or some other site where you won't know what you got until later when it fails? I know some of you guys think this is a non-issue but this is HUGE imo. It's a mockery of Intel.
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What kind of early adopter would be having geek squad install their shit? Its a black eye for Intel to be sure but at least they are nit fucking around and are proactively fixing it. Most companies tend to play the denial game for months to years when something needs recalled and even then half ass it. It is not as big of an issue as you think. Only very few OEM machines shipped with sb the majority affected seem to be early adopters who for the most part will be ok using the good ports or controller cards until replacements arrive.
 
jwalk6 said:
And how many [H] readers are going to have only one HDD and one Optical drive these days when most who care about such things are building cutting edge performance rigs with at least one SSD, a HDD for data and an optical drive. If your chipset is flaky it will get you into trouble quick .

That's why it's a big deal.

Kind of like buying a Toyota early last year. You may or may not have it suddenly accelerate out of control. It was enough to have the biggest automotive recall in history. This is the geek version of that.
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Good thing you brought up toyota...and exactly how many people died because of this Intel manufacturing issue?

How many Toyota's failed compared to how many millions were built? It was unfortunate that that officer and hid family died but he could have saved his butt with some very basic knowledge- if he actually learnd how to turn the car off (press and hold start button for 3 seconds). Since it was a rental and did not have a turnkey start, that should have been the FIRST question asked (How do I turn the car off in an emergency?) Did Toyota mess up? certainly, did they try and hide it? you bet, did their repuation suffer massively as a result? heck yea...did they try to blame someone else? yes they did. Were people blowing it all out of perportion based upon wild speculation? hell yeah they did.

Toyota's probem is only similar to the Intel one in the fact that it was an engineering oversight (no brake override) All the rest of the manufacturers that use DBW systems have had a brake override feature since they introduced it (Honda, GM, Chrysler, Ford, Nissan, etc)

Life is not risk free and you always take a chance when you buy or use something that it may or may not work as intended.

Intel stepped up to the plate and stated what the problem was and they immediately pulled stock and retooled to solve the issue. I would say kudos to Intel for doing the right thing and that they are more [H]ard than all of the [W]hiners in this forum..
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
Intel stepped up to the plate and stated what the problem was and they immediately pulled stock and retooled to solve the issue. I would say kudos to Intel for doing the right thing and that they are more [H]ard than all of the [W]hiners in this forum..
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Intel did the right thing, but doesn't the situation make you wonder what else could be wrong with the platform or what else they're fixing with this extra time? Even just a little bit? The timing and explanation seems shady to me.

Also, I don't think those of us that chose to get money back instead of sitting on defective hardware are whining. The investment in 1155 was just too great for me (The 2600K was the most expensive CPU I had ever purchased) to take the risk and depreciation. Not to mention I think the exchange process is going to be crazy, full of delays, and probably not as smooth as you all seem to think.
 
aldamon said:
Intel did the right thing, but doesn't the situation make you wonder what else could be wrong with the platform or what else they're fixing with this extra time? Even just a little bit? The timing and explanation seems shady to me.

Also, I don't think those of us that chose to get money back instead of sitting on defective hardware are whining. The investment in 1155 was just too great for me (The 2600K was the most expensive CPU I had ever purchased) to take the risk and depreciation. Not to mention I think the exchange process is going to be crazy, full of delays, and probably not as smooth as you all seem to think.
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NO, it does not, because intel is being UNUSUALLY up front and forthright in even admitting this issue before any users can be affected.

Some people like you, LIKE being paranoid conspiracy theorists.

Most reasonable people DO NOT.

FYI, I've had a chance to deal with a lot of sandy bridge technical quirks on the Newegg forums, and found that a VAST MAJORITY of them are from users who made improper purchase decisions regarding non-compatible hardware, or hardware from vendors that was mis-identified as SB capable. The most common among them being Memory (1.6 and 1.65V memory being advertised as SB compatible is most certainly NOT) and power supply (inadequate wattage PSU's with 4 pin ATX +12V connectors for a high powered SB build with a high power video card = no boot)
 
aldamon, not at all because all i know is when it does become available, it will be fixed so I am not too concerned either way. This isn't the first time Intel messed up and it certainly will not be the last.
 
aldamon said:
Intel did the right thing, but doesn't the situation make you wonder what else could be wrong with the platform or what else they're fixing with this extra time? Even just a little bit? The timing and explanation seems shady to me.

Also, I don't think those of us that chose to get money back instead of sitting on defective hardware are whining. The investment in 1155 was just too great for me (The 2600K was the most expensive CPU I had ever purchased) to take the risk and depreciation. Not to mention I think the exchange process is going to be crazy, full of delays, and probably not as smooth as you all seem to think.
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Ditto. I think there is more to the story.
 
One thing that strikes me as odd though is Intel's cost projection in regards to this story, which I am wondering if it is spun lower then reality to protect its share price. They claimed a loss of $300m in sales due to this error, but due to the lack of chipsets should they not factor in the loss of CPU sales as well?
 
It's certainly not as bad as the Pentium getting some calculations wrong. Then again, that flaw only affected a vanishingly small number of users who needed great precision on that specific bit of math. Nevertheless, AMD (and Cyrix) capitalized on the mistake.

This flaw may be less serious, but it will affect many many more users. Reputation hits like that cost sales.
 
Forceman said:
Just curious, but what, beyond mere conspiracy-theorism, makes you think that?
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Why did you use the phrase "conspiracy-theorism"? Probably the multitude of issues people have been having since SB came out? It is quite obvious the product was not ready for prime time. Then again, BP was not different trying to cheap out on safety. The same goes for Toyota... There was more issues with it than you think...
 
Iching said:
Why did you use the phrase "conspiracy-theorism"? Probably the multitude of issues people have been having since SB came out? It is quite obvious the product was not ready for prime time. Then again, BP was not different trying to cheap out on safety. The same goes for Toyota... There was more issues with it than you think...
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what multitude of issues? you mean the forums full of people whining that their stuff can't overclock?
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
what multitude of issues? you mean the forums full of people whining that their stuff can't overclock?
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I would guess he is referring to the seemingly endless stream of BIOS revisions coming out since launch for all these motherboards. Overclocking seems to the least of the issues.
Posted via Mobile Device
 
Katalysis said:
I would guess he is referring to the seemingly endless stream of BIOS revisions coming out since launch for all these motherboards. Overclocking seems to the least of the issues.
Posted via Mobile Device
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oh, you mean just like every other chipset at launch? lol
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Iching said:
Why did you use the phrase "conspiracy-theorism"? Probably the multitude of issues people have been having since SB came out? It is quite obvious the product was not ready for prime time. Then again, BP was not different trying to cheap out on safety. The same goes for Toyota... There was more issues with it than you think...
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Its not any different than any other major chipset launch.
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I was wondering why Newegg pulled there Asus boards from there site. I also got an email from microcenter about this.
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Let's see, I have a 2500k running stable at 4.6ghz on a asrock extreme6 with gtx 460sli. I have 4 sata2 ports and 6 sata3 ports. Running 2 optical drives and one hdd at the moment so that leaves me 3 open sata3 ports for expansion. I don't see the big problem here. I doubt I will even bother with swapping out the board unless they just ship me a new one, even then not sure. Some people are making this WAY too big of a deal.
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