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Hi Guys,
I have been researching the Alienware laptop range, especially the M17xR.3 as I am really keen to purchase one for my next gaming laptop but the recent announcement of the serious SATA Performance flaw discovered in the Sandy Bridge / Cougar Point chipset has me worried so I have put off my purchase for now until I can find out more about this. According to one source (see below), Dell reportedly said that they would provide motherboard replacements for affected customers. This would of course be a major hassle. Below are some articles that I have found.
Do you guys know anything about this? Can anybody shed some more light on this? Is it really as bad as it sounds?
Intel Confirms $700 Million Sandy Bridge Flaw
Intel said that it identified a “circuit design issue” in its Sandy Bridge 6-series chipset, which may cause SATA connections to fail.
Intel Logo
According to Intel, the SATA performance may degrade over time and impact the performance of linked devices such as hard drives or DVD drives. The issue only affects the chipset (code-named Cougar Point) and not the processor itself, Intel said.
Source: Intel Confirms $700 Million Sandy Bridge Flaw | ConceivablyTech
Dell Alienware gaming PCs
Dell says its Alienware M17xR.3 notebook and the Alienware Aurora R.3 desktop are the only Dell PCs that have been affected.
In a blog post, Dell said affected customers will receive support under the terms of their warranty and that they will provide motherboard replacements with the fixed chipsets once it's available. Intel says the fixed chipsets will have shipped by April, if not March. Dell's Alienware M17x R3 notebook is the third model within Dell's family of 17.3-inch gaming laptops. The Alienware M17x R3 features Sandy Bridge processors -- Core i7 2820QM, i7 2720QM, and i7 2630QM -- along with a discrete graphics card -- either a 1.5GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 460M or a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6870M.
The Alienware Aurora R.3 desktop offers 6 GB of DDR3 RAM, 1TB SATA 3Gb/s (7, 200RPM) 32MB Cache, and a single 24X CD/DVD burner with double-layer write capability. The Aurora R.3 pairs Sandy Bridge with a 1GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 discrete graphics card.
Source: http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/comp...ith-intel-cougar-point-design-flaw.htm?pgno=4
Unfortunately for Intel, a design flaw has led to a halt in shipments and a recall of affected products, a situation which the company reports will cost around $1 billion to correct, according to a press release.
Intel’s press release points to a flaw in the chipset’s SATA ports — the inputs to which hard drives and optical drives are connected — which causes them to degrade over time, “potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives.” With the issue identified, manufacturing has already begun on fresh CPUs.
Source: Sandy Bridge flaw halts sales of affected Dell, MSI and Gigabyte products - Yahoo! News
Here's the thing we can confirm, the problem is to be found solely in the SATA 300 controller, the SATA 600 controllers are unaffected as well as any other added controllers on your motherboard.
On the up-to four SATA2 (SATA 300) ports in a timeframe measured over years, your performance failure rate 5% to 15% based on standard usage. The controller simply will produce more errors and as that result the controller performance thus will go down as it tries to correct it. Worst case scenario is that the overhead would get so big that your HDD/SSD would not be recognized in Windows any longer. These predictions are all based on statistical numbers though.
Source: http://www.guru3d.com/news/sandy-bridge-chipset-design-flaw-recalls/
Thanks.
Rudi
Cougar Point design flaw affects M17xR.3?
Discussion in 'Alienware 17 and M17x' started by rudiprinsloo, Feb 4, 2011.
