Sandy Bridge Design Flaw

Is Z68 replacing H65/H67? Or is it just desktop chipset replacement?

 

I love Dell support.

 

The Source of Intel's Cougar Point SATA Bug - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

apparently notebooks might not be affected

 

H67 is notebooks.

 

if you read the rest of the artical it says ports 0 and 1 are not effected or rather if you only use 0 and 1 then the problems should be minimal. and since notebooks typically only use 0 and 1..........you get the idea.

 

Right. Depends on the notebook and implementation. Ports 0 and 1 are SATA III, 2-5 are SATA II. Even if the machine has a single hard drive or SSD, notebook manufacturers might decide to still put the optical drive (if it has one) on port 2 for whatver reason. And if a machine comes with eSATA depends on how that is implemented also.

So if you buy a notebook with a single hard drive and no optical drive or eSATA there should be no worries. Otherwise you'll have to let the manufacturer let you know if it's good or not. I wouldn't doubt if some machines are still safe for sale. Plus I've seen continued reports of H67/P67 but no H65, which is more common in laptops too. So maybe only the larger machines are affected (that'd be me. )

Intel apparently put a "cease sales" of all Sandy Bridge laptops for the time being. Probably until it is all sorted out. Hopefully we'll know more in the next day or so. I'm watching carefully because my Sandy Bridge laptop has shipped and in transit to me right now.

 

That is the point I don't understand why people(including those articles that try to see which is affected or not affected). For existing SB owner, it may still have some value of determining whether they want to return it or keep it. For potential buyers, just wait till the new stepping is out.

I would not buy from any shop that is still selling it as that sounds like iffy sales practice to me.

 

yeh. i was looking at the alienware m17x r3 and apparently they use o and 1 for the HDDs. I rarely if ever use the optical drive so its not as much of an issue. And since this flaw seems to be load dependent there is no way anyones going to put that much load on a DVD drive. So it might be ok. might be more of a problem for guys who use Raid 5 for example on the desktop side since that requires 3 HDD minimum and is working all of them mos tof the time..

 

Well I hope this isn't the case for orders that are already processing.

 

If it truly ends up being ports 0 & 1 are ok and that's what my laptop uses for hdd/ssd, and port 2 for blu-ray, then I don't have much issue. I will still probably want it fixed in the future though. Just not looking forward to the multiple week downtime without it. Although if I can stall long enough and get a Z68 board out of it, it'll be worth it.

 

I think I have a pretty good idea of what will be one of the stories on the front page of the newspapers tomorrow.

Also:

Newegg pulls ALL SB laptops.
PC Perspective - Newegg pulls Sandy Bridge CPUs and P67 MBs while NVIDIA snickers quietly

Specific Source of Problem
PC Perspective - Legacy technology is source for Intel's chipset woes and recall

 

Now's the time to buy Intel stock! You know it'll only go up after this fiasco clears.

 

This is from my sale rep:

IMO, for those who have bought/about to purchase R3, DO NOT let this issue confuse you because this is not a functional problem and more important, it has no immediate effects.

It has issues with SATA, sure, but only to port 2 3 4 5. Who might use DVD/Bluray ROM all the day for gaming/video editting? And if you do, dont forget that this will only happen after a period of time at a pretty low rate until you can notice the difference. 1 year, 2 year may be? You will have ENOUGH time until it shows some degrading performance to either replace it or just let it go. Dell and Intel will sure take care of this, so feel FREE to use/order whatever you want.

I was very confused at first. But now, after some more details were announced, to me it's just a minor issue (maybe not to you ). It's just like when you bought a brand-new Lamborghini Reventon and you just discovered that it has some bad small part under the passenger's windows which may cause the windows not so smooth when rolling, and that only happens after a period of time with heavy use.
Now, tell me, if Lamborghini made a recall, do you still want to return/cancel the Lamborghini order right away, or will just play with it for a while then decide?

I hope this would relieve your mind somehow, just like me

And I also wish when Intel has fixed products ready, they will give some "extra credit" for those who had to wait to send the old SB chipsets to be replaced because that would absolutely be a big inconvenience.

 

I don't know. Intel got wiff of the issue because customers were complaining of performance issues.

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

But then it goes on to say:

Which makes me very confused. Customers complained about performance but we (the customers) shouldn't see any degradations for years down the road and it would only affect 5-15% ? Sounds like a contradiction.

 

Intel just discovered the root cause of the issue, I highly doubt they know for sure how likely a board is going to be dead within 3 years. In something like three or four months of testing they didn't find this, and it is a fundamental enough of a bug that they should have.

They're trying to make it look good for investors, and that's it.

 

Well, the good thing is they did let us know about this. Once it goes public, time and convenience are the only thing that matters. Im not sure how many customers complained, but if they did discovered the issue, they are genius

 

Either way, Intel are handling themselves very well with this issue. Atleast they didn't pull an Nvidia and deny the issue and never fix it (till they were taken to court and lost). Atleast they are on top of it now and working now to correct the issue.
I guess I'm going to be a broken record in saying that, but I think it's true. I feel Intel are being very open about this, and they are already manufacturing new chips. That's as close to top-notch service that you can expect from any company IMHO.
On that note however, I think I'm going with AMD this round. I'd just be too paranoid of any possible lingering issues. :\

 

So I already posted this in various R3 threads, but here's the gist:

I called Dell today and spoke to 2 csrs about the Intel issue and how it would affect my purchase. The first csr said she heard about the issue this morning, but did not know what Dell would be doing, so she deferred me to "Dell America's", which ironically the 2nd csr was based in India hahaha. This csr told me he did not know about the issue yet, but when something new happens, everyone in teh office is usually notified early on. He then apologized for the inconvenience, and empathized with me. I asked him how this would affect my order, which was currently in the "Order Processing" stage, with an EDD of 2/18. He said he did not know, but to help, he would change my 7day shipping to NBD. This was very decent of him, but I'm still unsure of what Dell will be doing. Also, NBD doesn't really help with the hardware issue lol.

I hope that Dell will allow us to send our units back for recallin/fixin' though.

 

I see that some confusion out there is the old SATA naming confusion.
SATA II has a speed of 3Gb/s, and has been sometimes called "SATA 3" (note the Hindu-Arabic numeral, not a roman numeral). As a result of that, the SATA governing organization has requested that the latest implementation of SATA be called "SATA 6Gb/s". Even though it is the third version of SATA, or, in essence, SATA III.
Great explanation found at WiseGeek.

So, the point is, Cougar Point SATA ports 0 and 1 are SATA 6Gb/s ports, while ports 2 through 5 are SATA II ports at 3Gb/s. The latter are the ones with a potential flaw.

Also, there are hints that there may be a "spin" of the chipset that is not problematic. That's unconfirmed, still.

Good take on it all here at Maximum PC

Personally, I'll be content to wait a bit and then buy Sandy Bridge. The system I want will use three SATA ports: one SSD, one HDD, one BD-ROM/DVD-RW. But I'll take the "risk" once the vendors start shipping again. Why? Simply put, I'm fairly certain that the vendors will do everything they can to use flawless chipsets, because they don't want warranty repairs and replacements of bad boards. And they'll be on the hook (or Intel will) for any "hinky" SATA problems, as this recall is so loud and public.

Just my thoughts.

 

Agreed. I will only be using one hdd and the dvd-rw though. So I needn't worry so much (besides the thought of having a "potentially" defective laptop), right ?

 

I would return it right away...

 

There's an update in Anand's article that says that Intel was legally bound to make a public disclosure before informing it's OEM customers. So in this case it was a regulatory requirement, and they weren't allowed to inform anyone that might have gotten the news sooner before they made the public notice.

A few customers had performance issues, which means that they noticed things were slowing down and not operating at the speeds that they should, but they hadn't gotten to complete failure point yet, where only the SATA III (6 Gbps) ports were working. That's what the 5-15% a few years down the road numbers mean; that is the proportion of chipsets that will "completely" fail and have the SATA II (3 Gpbs) ports unusable. You'll run into performance issues before that failure rate. It's like hearing a clunking noise from under your car; your car hasn't failed yet, but it's performance is suffering, and it indicates that it will fail.

 

So what do we do now as consumers who are waiting for Dell to deliver our m17x R3's?

 

Thanks for clearup Judicator, that makes more sense. Makes me feel better that I returned my laptop.

I think the only thing we can do now is to pretend it's November/December 2010 and that Sandy Bridge will come out in a month or so.

 

Repped for hilarity. <-- cool, didn't even know that was a word

 

Unfortunately, I think that is the only thing we can do at this point.

 

Nooooo!!!!!

I was literally going to order my AW M17x R3 tomorrow.

Darn you, financial aid being delayed!!!

I see their website still has the systems on offer - I wonder if they'll still let me get one, and then just send me out a replacement in a few months? I can hope, right? Right?

 

So what should folks like me, who have purchases pending/in the build process, do? My m17x R3's EDD is 2/16/11 fyi.

Should I just receive it and return it? Or receive it and wait for a recall? It'd be covered under warranty either way, right?

 

Read my previous post and just relax. Dont let this bother you anymore

 

My guess is, if it hasn't shipped yet, it will be delayed until it's fixed. That would make the most sense.

 

Crap.

I've been waiting for 2 weeks for my financial aid to come through for the sole purpose (aside from paying for classes ) of being able to order the R3.

 

They say it'll take about 3 weeks for the new hardware to be ready, so I'd expect "new" orders should be back on track in about a month or so.

 

Yup, the insider trading thingy. What I meant to say though is for really critical/important stuff, all these trade press is not going to get 'first hand' information.

 

I just chated with sales rep, for those that dont want to read the entire message here is what the gist of it was

"i have verified with my manager about this concern, you can purchase the laptops with sandy bridges if you like, and when the new processors of Intel has come out and the concern I resolved, all those systems that are part of the recall with be replaced with a new one, and will still be under your warranty service"

Heres the full convo lol

 

You have just saved my day! Thanks

 

The way I see it is:
Your going to have some down time either way. Either wait now for the fixed laptops or wait for the repair when you send it in. Both will probably be at least 4 weeks.

 

My sole reason why I will never buy another notebook with an nVidia GPU, no matter how much more powerful it is than AMD/ATI

 

Exactlly what I meant in the previous post. Feel FREE to use/order whatever R3 you want. Of course you may prefer waiting now rather than later when Dell recalls to save your time, may be 3-4 more weeks, may be later, who knows? In that case cancel/return now is the best move.

But again, my point is, just ENJOY and BE HAPPY with your purchase. You all have nothing to worry about.

 

Anand just clarified it.
Customers here mean laptop/desktop manufacturers such as dell, hp, asus ect.
We are "end users", not classified as Intel customer.
5-15% seem to be the degrading rate, not the complete failure rate.

 

My big question is if Dell will send a tech out to fix it in home or if we are going to have to send it in

 

im getting the 3 year warranty. I doubt i will be using the CD rom drive for anything in 3 years. Probably everything is either downloaded or streamed.

the optical drive seems to be the only device using SATA II on the alienware.

 

A slight exaggeration on dells part

 

Yes they will, as long as your laptop is still under warranty (basic warranty is good enough)

Dell - Help Me Choose: Warranty Options

 

Unless you raid, or use a usb based device, or watch blueray..

At this point even if you DO order a R3 from Dell, you probably wont get it untill the new chipset is on it.

Me, I am glad I waited

 

It's affecting usb now too? I thought that was unaffected.

 

Only your 1st and 2st HDD (or SSD) are not affected.
USB port/devices/Bluray/DVD Rom are all affected.

 

can you point me to the links? i thought it was a sata II only problem.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins-recall

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4143/the-source-of-intels-cougar-point-sata-bug

they all seem to say its only the SATA II.

Devices cover a lot of things.

 

Only the SATA 3 ports are not affected (your first and second drive could be attached to any port...)

USB is not affected.

 

gladly, my new sandy bridge system only uses the sata3 ports for the ssd and the bluray. puh..

 

I was going to buy an R3 this week and Im actually glad I didn't pull the trigger over the weekend. Would rather have a fully competent machine in 2 months than a gimped headache right now. Seems they're (intel) doing a good job explaining the problem and fixing it right away rather than waiting for a class action lawsuit down the road.

For now ill have to be content gaming on my iphone afk.