Intel Finds Design Flaw in New Sandy Bridge Chipset

Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

IMO, you give "people" too much credit.
"I ordered a product from Dell. Dell made me send it back for repair because of something-whatever. Don't buy from Dell."

Anyway, hopefully it's not a major issue!

 

beat me to it... Although that kinda conflicts what I was told...

 

I see you have the perfect answers for this boy

 

Well this is a great article that gives us all the details we need. Basically you have a 15% chance of having issues with your chipset if you use the 3Gb/s ports. So that means anyone using the 6Gb/s ports will not be affected. The problem is that everyone uses the 3Gb/s port with DVD, Bluray, etc...

 

Has anybody been able to identify what components use what ports of the chipset in the R3? I.E. Port1=HDD 0, Port2=HDD1, Port3=ODD, etc?

 

There was a time AMD was king and Intel were loosers ....

about the R3, good that I have an R2 on order and not an R3
do feel sorry for everyone that is having an R3 on the way ...

 

It's all controlled by the same controller. It would affect all ports.

Also @ AMD vs. Intel and anti-trust laws. It wouldn't make a bit of difference, there are processors still manufactured by other manufacturers. Cyrix, ARM, etc. There are still other manufacturers of procs.

 

LVNeptune- if you read a bit deeper it isn't the entire controller itself, it's only ports 4-6 which are the 3gb/s(SATA II) ports not the 1-2 ports which are 6gb/s(SATA III). So if we can determine what ports control what we can know which hardware to watch for issues with.

 

Hey let's see the good part in this: At least they have the guts to admit it even though it might create a loss,unlike "others" that had systems shipped and even today don't want to admit they need tweaking.

 

The controller is not the issue and the article clearly specifies only the 3Gb/s ports are affected.

This means on the R3 the SSD or HDD would not be affected since they are on the 6Gb/s ports. Only the DVD or Bluray would be affected.

 

email my sales rep regarding this news and asked him if my R3 will be shipped with fixed chipset. He replied me as the following.
"Thanks Peter,
Dell will make the internal changes to the chipset based on the reviews and use,You would get the modified chipset and design based on the production,
I will update you in case of any changes."

It seems Dell will provide new chipset for still in production R3 so I need to add more weeks to have my R3 delivered.

Peter

 

I must have missed this, I will re-read the article. Thanks

EDIT: Nope, re-read it. It does specifically state the chipset

"The company said it will deliver an updated version of the chipset in late February with full volume in April. Intel added that it will work with PC makers to handle returns of the chipset and support motherboard replacements."

Not sure where you received your information.

 

OMG...

READ THIS PLEASE: OFFICIAL INTEL RESPONSE TO ANAND TECH QUESTIONS


ONLY THE 3Gb/s PORTS ARE AFFECTED... INTEL SAYS IT THEY KNOW BETTER THAN YOU.


Of course they will deliver a new chipset. Can you imagine changing the ports on each chipset. That would be impossible without changing the chipset. At least not on a large scale.

 

It's in bold, not hard to miss in that article.

 

Try reading under the It’s Limited to 3Gbps Ports Only section.

 

yeah no kidding

 

I am still looking through these articles and trying to find where it says anything about 3gbit or 6gbit. Oh wait, they don't.

Anandtech's article wasn't linked to until recently.

 

Let's not get this thread closed please. This is important information for R3 owners. Thread evolve and it's important to look at ALL the material and ALL the sources before posting that others are stupid and don't get it.

Anyways, IT IS CONFIRMED BY INTEL LIKE WE ALL TOLD YOU MANY TIMES. Only the 3Gb/s ports are affected.

 

Does it matter? The entire chipset (all the controllers and interconnects) are on the same piece of silicon....so whether it is one USB port or the entire SATA controller, the whole chipset has to be replaced......there is only one intel chip other than the CPU in a sandy bridge system - and it is the PCH/chipset

 

ok well if u need to find it again it was linked twice on pg. 6

 

Well in a way it does matter because we know that the R3 uses the two 6Gb/s ports for the HDD therefore R3 users won't be affected. That is important info.

The only thing that will be on the R3 is the DVD which is on the 3gb/s port.

This mean it's not as bad as we think for R3 owners.

 

It also states Intel doesn't forsee this happening until about 3 years down the road depending on usage, etc.

 

I ordered my R3 on the 27th, but since my laptop really hasn't gone under production yet, does this mean I won't be getting my R3 until march (so intel can fix their problem, and switch the MB)?

If not, how is intel treating this situation? A recall? A reimbursement?

 

based on the article, intel is doing a recall. But none of us sure what Dell will do about this.

 

No one knows what Dell's position is so far. They will either delay the shipments or use current inventory of potentially defective chipset and ship your PC. Since this only affect DVD and eSATA then they may just ship the PC and deal with the issues later.

Again no one knows we will need and official answer to this issue from Dell.

 

Ordered my R3 on Jan 28th. When I called a Rep today, He said that R3 will get new design implement so the order should be find.

I also notice that my order suddenly became 1day shipping instead of 7 days, the delivery date change from 2/18 to 2/16. that means 4 day more "in production."

 

I gave Dell a call asking what they would be doing to fix this issue. They gave me a case number and told me to expect a call tomorrow. Not sure they'll have an answer yet, but at least I can use the case number to press the issue if I need to.

My R3 is in production and will probably ship soon. I didn't want to cancel the order but instead asked them simply to let me know what they would do to correct the issue.

I'll post again if I hear anything significant that someone else doesn't post first.

 

Update from engadget:
Intel finds Sandy Bridge chipset design flaw, shipments stopped and recalls beginning -- Engadget

so the mobile version may not be affect, and the rep told me that their will be change in design of the chipset

 

Maybe Dell are doing something because I placed my order today and the estimated delivery time is March 11th. Perhaps they're waiting for the new set of chips?

 

Maybe. Mine still shows 02/16/2011 and I ordered yesterday.

 

Hopefully they are fixing the problem because March is an obscure amount of time to wait for my baby!

 

The plot thickens...

Everyone can keep making assumptions as to what Dell is doing right now but it is pointless until they make an official statement, or information gets leaked

 

haha, well mine still shows EDD 2/18 and I ordered 1/25. Dont know why you have 2 days less than me when i ordered a week before you, but anyways I think dell will send out all orders now and deal with it later. If they postpone I believe more people would cancel their orders, which means less $$$ for Dell, and you know all they care about is $$$$.

And LVN, making assumptions is what makes it exciting....so on with the assumptions!!!

 

"Intel has halted shipments of the component, a support chip code-named "Cougar Point" that was part of its Intel 6-series of chipsets. It was found to have a structural flaw inside of it that degraded the performance of SATA-linked devices such as hard-disk drives, Intel said, perhaps 6 percent across a three-year lifespan. The glitch snuck by Intel on initial tests..."

 

Was going to buy one of these(m17x) this week. Now Im just going to have to wait it out a couple more weeks.
On a side note Neweegg.com pulled all sandy bridge laptops. Will be interesting to see how far reaching the problem is.

 

Now we just need someone with an R3 to go into the bios and fond out what uses which sata port... so we can understand whether this is bad or very bad....

 

I just tried contacting Dell customer support about the issue. None of the representatives knew English nor did they know about the problem. They kept transferring me back in forth between two departments. I just ended the call. That was extremely frustrating.

 

This is quoted from tomshardware:

The error lies in Sandy Bridge's SATA controller, which at this time, is identified to degrade performance over time. But, what does this mean for motherboard and system manufacturers:

According to several major manufacturers that we spoke to, customers are calling asking to return stock. Since mass quantities of boards and systems have already been sold into the channel, systems builders are still waiting for official word from Intel on what to do. Surprisingly, top management at companies like Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, etc., did not even hear about this issue until this morning -- when everyone else found out.

This is definitely a major roadblock for Intel, and it means several things for you as a customer:

- If you've bought a Sandy Bridge system, you may be entitled to a free replacement.

Manufacturers told us that revised motherboards and notebooks based are unlikely to appear until at least April of this year, and Intel probably won't be supplying new chipset revisions until early to mid-March. However, replacements are unclear as manufacturers are informing us that details need to be worked out with Intel on how customers will be handled.

Intel claims that only 5-percent of Sandy Bridge owners will experience the flaw. But speaking with manufacturers, we were told that numbers appear to be far greater than that. Some companies told us that this is definitely a "panic-mode" situation for them.

Motherboards that you already have today will still work, but you may see performance drop over time.

- If you're thinking about a Sandy Bridge system, you will have to wait until at least April.

Clearly, buying a Sandy Bridge system isn't what anyone should be doing at this moment.

- Desktops, notebooks, servers are all affected.
This is a widespread problem affecting all products that are based on Sandy Bridge. Notebooks and up-coming Xeon-based servers may take longer than motherboards to see replacements become widely available.

- Expect delays in new availability.

Some companies told us that there is some shortage of copper and other materials from the manufacturing side. This could further introduce delays beyond an April time frame.

- Sandy Bridge updates.

Intel is expected to hold several conference calls with major manufacturers today and let them know how the situation will be handled. We'll have more details for you later this afternoon.

Source: Intel Identifies Cougar Point Chipset Error, Halts Shipments

 

Since this is an Intel issue and impacting every brand of system which uses the chipset, please continue here - there is a discussion on this already under way in the Hardware section of NBR. Check it out...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...upgrades/551902-sandy-bridge-design-flaw.html

If/when there is some type of official response from Dell, we can create a more specific thread to discuss their response. Until that time, its pointless for us to speculate further here.

Thanks.