INTEL Recall of Sandy Bridge CPU's!???

Same question here, please elaborate, thanks.

 

If esata really isn't affected there's no reason to stop shipment of the 8150...

 

Except the ODD is on Port 2 and can also be used for an HDD.

 

Speed is irrelevant, I think.

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

 

I concur, especially since I might replace it with a caddy at a later time...

 

Ah ok, didn't read far enough back. Earlier today people thought the ODD was on port 1. Unfortunate to say the least.

 

Please see my edit to post #92.

EDIT: eSATA DOES use on of the ports 2~5 so it is affected.

 

This whole thing is fubar. I just want a rapid fix. I don't want my laptop gone for several weeks is all I ask...

 

It should be an organized, methodical way systems would come in for the fix. Not for everyone at once "send them all back now" message. At least I think so...

 

Correct me if I am wrong but from what I understand, most of us can use our new laptops like normal for a few months while we wait for the panic to die down and then just send it in for the fix. Short term this will have very little or no negative impact on the laptop.

I don't have any plans to use the eSATA port in the near future so the only thing affected would be the ODD which will have a far less draw on power than the HD and shouldn't be a critical issue for most users until a solution is in place.

Honestly I'm not really worried right now because I'm confident it will get resolved in a professional way. Sure it will suck having to go without a laptop for a few weeks in the near future, but in the meantime I plan on using it like normal.

 

Correct. Anyone who already received an affected machine can relax and wait for the eventual replacement, as if nothing is wrong. Those of us waiting for machines are the ones getting shafted until who knows when.

 

Yeah Kevin, sorry to hear that =/

 

Its not just the people who are waiting that got shafted, everyone did. Sure this will delay orders a lot longer, but I think thats better than sending out more defective boards knowing that they will have to be returned for a replacement in month or so. Everyone loses, people who are waiting, people who have to replace it later, resellers, clevo, intel.
I would much rather wait than deal with a replacement later down the road with a reseller.

 

If ports 0 and 1 are not affected, then its ok, since these are the ones the hdd are linked to most of the time.

If you have esata linked to no. 2 or 5, this can be circumvented by using said external hdd on a usb 3.0 port (similar speed)
If you have a 3.5" desktop hdd inside a rack connected to esata to the laptop, you could get a usb 3.0 rack, and use the hdd via usb.
This is the fix im thinking for esata.

If you have the optical drive linked to no.2 or 5, then you could also use an external optical drive on usb 3.0 (i dont know if such a thing exists, but i think it does)

However, optical drives for some are used rarely, and this issue is said to happen in time. So the problem is actually not that bad.

HOWEVER, all of this IS an additional hassle that should not have existed in the first place.

Glad i got my x7200.

 

For me, my data is much more valuable than laptop parts. Ports 0 & 1 are not affected by the bug, but that is just a theory. Who can prove that it is 100% correct theory?

From my point of view, this bug affects the most sensitive part of the one computer - data. I believe, but I'm not 100% sure that my data is safe and that I should not be concerned about data corruption.

 

There is no reason for Intel to lie on the ports affected. After they found the bug I'm sure they double checked every single port/component. So it's not theory. It would be the same thing as saying "who can prove that the previous, non-SB chipsets weren't affected", but you seem to rely on them for your data just fine.

 

From what has been discussed more than 1000 times now, its the SATA II controller that is faulty. Ports 0,1 are on the SATA III controller so their fine, ports 2-5 are on the SATA II controller which will eventually die out after a certain amount of usage killing all ports connected to that controller. This is due to a faulty transistor in the SATA II controller.

 

The way i see it is this. We work hard to earn our money and many do jobs they don't even enjoy. If we are going to spend this hard earned cash on an expensive laptop, I expect everything to be working 100% regardless of whether I will use it or not.

 

+1

Especially considering that these aren't you average laptops, quite expensive I might add.

 

How can you be so convinced that there is no reason?

Maybe it's only half of the story, for the public. If something is faulty, in any way, especially when it comes to the parts that has to do with the storage and data handling, it is unacceptable to use such product even if the affected ports will never be used.

It is not the same. Intel admits that there is a design bug in SB chipset. In SB case, the question is: whether the story for the public is complete story? Personally, I'm skeptical about that.

 

Yeah. And if I stall long enough, any chance I can get my board swapped with the Z68?

 

Exactly! Even the tiniest detail of this laptop for me is very important.

 

I'm sure if you were sitting in on a board meeting with Intel execs you would have the whole story and what their plans are to fix this. NDA's and non-transparency are so that we don't have the information at hand to make informed decisions when it comes to canceling orders or contacting attorneys. If they told us the full story or let us in on every detail, we would probably not be so nice about it. As it is, we play the "hey you wanna know how to make a dummy wait for ~3 months?" game. The answer is inevitably that they will tell us in ~3 months.

Meanwhile, I have full confidence that our resellers are telling us everything they know or can tell. I would be interested to know if we can change our order at this point to another non-SB model, possibly with a decent discount?

 

I think you guys are making it more complicated than it is. I don't think there's any consipiracy.

They're replacing the SATA controller chip, nothing fancy. If they were replacing the CPU or other components then I'd say it's a lot more contrived. Data corruption is a serious issue and Intel obviously isn't taking it lightly. They're not spending $1B just for fun.

I am in a quandary myself. I've waited a while and for once bought pretty much top of the line this time around. I do feel like it's a bit tainted by this issue, but I'm not willing to wait two to three months to order again. Backorders will only pile up in the meantime and probably won't get the laptop until April or May.

In either case, I'm waiting to hear details from XoticPC and find out how this will be handled. I really don't want my machine gone for 3-4 weeks though.

 

It is the same: what if Intel discovered bugs in the earlier chipsets and never admitted them. It would all be a cover up; and it's all conspiracy theory.

But I do agree, it's not acceptable and everyone should get theirs fixed.

 

Part of me wonders if there are other areas of the Sandybridge tech that have unidentified issues. I guess the most dangerous outcome of such events are reduced trust from consumers. I am strongly considering just going from the NP8170 to the much heavier NP7280 with a single GTX 485M and the default Desktop processor.

@ htwingnut Are you considering any real alternatives if you find it will be a really long wait?

 

Perhaps "conspiracy" is not the right word. I would rather say that this is a strategy for handling critical situation.

I'm also in doubt what to do, but I think I'll return my brand new SB notebook and buy another non-SB i7 system.

 

I wasn't saying that it was a conspiracy at all, I was just saying that you shouldn't expect them to give you the full details. If you had the full details about how long you would have to wait, you would likely cancel your order. That's why they don't tell you. At least, not right away anyway.

Imagine, if they gave a firm date of 3 months wait at the least, the minute the news came out, orders would be getting canceled left and right. Instead, they leave it in a sort of gray area while still breaking the bad news so that you hold out the hope that you will eventually get a good notebook somewhere down the road. They told you, but not in the most factual way...for a reason.

Meanwhile, the tech you paid top dollar for is sitting on a shelf, getting outdated.

 

I'm amazed how many ppl have a casual "i'll just wait unitl it fails" attitude when we're talking about data/storage. You've obviously never lost any critical data, ie. tax return, design work, purchased music, etc

This is the same forum where ppl were going apesh*t over a 30 day no dead pixel guarantee which is at worst an annoyance with no functionality hit. I guess gamers vs. power users/non-gamers have different priorities.

Personally I had a nightmare ~8-10 years ago where a desktop mobo had a bad chip/controller with a similar same type of issue. It caused 3 drives in a row to slowly get corrupted FAT's/MBR's over the course of a few year. I lost a lot of work (and time) and will not take a chance with that again.

 

I refuse to buy a current gen i7 laptop. I want SB.

If it is truly how they explain then I have little risk at all of losing any data. Ports 0 & 1 are clean, which are the hard drive ports. I have daily backups to my WHS so if there is drive corruption, I have up to six months worth of backups to rely on.

Optical drive and eSATA risk corruption. I will use the optical for movie viewing and occasions burn non-critical data. I just won't use the eSATA port, I recently got a USB 3.0 portable HDD which I will use instead anyhow.

I do expect it to get fixed though, but if it's going to be three months or more as I think it will be for them to start selling the laptops again, I just can't / don't want to wait.

 

That's because it doesn't cause data corruption. The SATA II ports may (will?) experience performance reduction over time, and many may (will?) eventually fail. That doesn't mean corrupt data, it means the ports will no longer recognize any device connected to it. You can plug the device into another working port on a different computer, and the data will be intact.

Many of these ports may only ever have only optical drives connected to them, and so they won't load the bad part up enough to even cause a problem.

If you are relying on hard-drives as your only form of backup, vs. 'the cloud' of some sort, for critical data, then you are setting yourself up for data loss. What do you do in the case of a house fire or flood (broken water pipes do happen) that destroys your computer and all of the drives?

Dead Pixels are flaws in the panel, but they won't be replaced unless 'they are bad enough' - 'bad enough' being some completely arbitrary value set by the manufacturer, who is certainly not an unbiased party.

In this case, Intel KNOWS of a definite flaw in the chipset and is fixing it now. They could say 'when/if it fails we'll replace it, but it has to meet a certain failure threshold and you have to prove it isn't some other problem.'

I can understand why people go ape over dead pixels, but not over this. For one, very few of these are actually in end-user hands. For another, Intel is fixing the problem upfront, not trying to hide behind some arbitrary 'policy'.

 

I'm with htwingnut. I was SOO looking forward to getting a new laptop. No way am I buying one of the older models - less performance - same price? No thanks.

This will impact Intel more than just the upfront costs of replacing chipsets. There is a potential for a drop in sales as people wait for the fixed SB motherboards and CPUs. They have a months worth of product in the pipeline that is no good and has to be junked - fab operation isn't free.

I would think laptop vendors will be be hit hard - they are probably ramping down previous gen designs, and were ramping up SB designs. Now that whole plan is in chaos.

 

Right, many laptop vendors start exhausting previous gen products well before a new chip launch. If it's any more than a few weeks I wouldn't doubt if there were laptop shortages until the SB laptops finally start ramping up again.

 

Like they all said, your data probably is not at risk the way the issue is described, just plug it into an enclosure and you still have it.

That said, I'll take my laptop with a faulty optical drive for now so long as i can use it for like 10 hours total before it dies and I can send it back for a replacement mobo for free within the first year (shipping free too).

 

Sandy Bridge Bug 2X Costly as Pentium Math Bug

 

$700M is a lot, but a company which makes $3B per quarter will survive, I think.

 

I don’t think that this issue should be taken as lightly as some seem to be taking it. From what I gather this is what we know now:

The issue is within the 6 series chipset specifically not the motherboard.

The chipset is a single chip that has pci-e bus, usb2.0, sata3, sata2, and many other functions packaged into one single chip package.

The fault is with the sata2 port 2 to 5 within this chip (not an external problem). The fault is that the path of sata2 controller Port 2 to 5 within the chip is supplied with over voltages that will make it deteriorate and fail over time. ANY peripheral that uses these ports will eventually cause this problem.

One concern that hasn’t been addressed is how this affects other functions. Since this is a multiple function chip will a sata 2 failure cause other problems?

I will be interested to see how this develops.

 

Yeah, the estimated 1 bil is a drop in the bucket to them. They are already ready to produce ivy bridge.. so they are ahead of schedule despite this setback.

Also there has been speculation on another forum by a member who actually works in the industry that it could affect your drives and not just the controller. So I wouldnt be tossing in your 300$ ssd anytime soon, as no one knows for sure.

 

New From Sager:

 

Thanks for this update.

Good to know they are offering both ways 3-day air for repair.

 

That is still a long wait for a laptop ordered in Jan., but I guess nothing can be done about it.

 

Yeah 3 day air is better than UPS ground which is 5 days both ways for me. I'd prefer 2 day but I guess it is what it is.

 

Yeah, two day air would indeed be better, but three day air both ways isn't bad. Especially considering how many units are going to need to be shipped back and forth. Two day air is a fair bit more expensive than three day, and with the amount of shipping that this is going to require, I think that would be too much of a financial hit for them to incur, on top of all the stuff they already have to do.

 

I will try to explain my point in more detail. I'm talking about the people casually saying they have or are getting an affected machine and will just use it until failure. It has nothing to do with numbers of machines in use.

If the issue is degraded performance via the SATA controller where transfer rates slow down over time and drives may be come unavailable, then there is plenty of opportunity for data corruption. Have you never experienced a write failure having a file crash or not save due to a temporary USB hiccup, drive coming out of sleep, etc?

Per Anandtech, this is a physical component (a transistor) failing over time because its bias voltage is set too high. I don't know about you but I wouldn't want to be working on my final term paper wondering when that transistor was going to finally fry itself. Yes if a port completely fails you can plug the drive into another machine, and the data should be there, but if the controller had degraded performance issues do you really trust that data? That is my point.

I could backup to 15 places across the globe - if the source is corrupt it doesn't matter. Intel was alerted to this issue by consumers reporting drives becoming unavailable, and the chip was only out a few weeks. So clearly it can happen pretty quickly .

It is not a case of if but when this part fails for the flawed pieces. I think its downright irresponsible and reckless for anyone especially vendors to be encouraging consumers to use an affected machine like there is no concern here, regardless of how few Sandy bridge machines are actually in use yet.

I know NDA's are involved, and we the consumer can't know everything. But I guarantee if we are discussing it here Intel has heard the question from vendors. It seems like an obvious FAQ? - is hard drive data at risk? So since it has not been mentioned by Intel or merchants, I tend to think there is a conscious choice NOT to mention it.

 

Thanks for the update Justin!

My machine has been delivered today!

Eric

 

Again, it is ports 2-5 which are optical drive and eSATA in Sager/Clevo notebooks. Knowing that, I won't use those for any critical data.

Ports 0 and 1 are unaffected which is where drives are mounted by default in Sager units. If you know about a potential failure and utilize the "bad" ports for mission critical data then that's at your own risk.

If all ports were affected you can guarantee they would have asked that all units be returned immediately or risk complete data loss. They're not going to spend $1B and still let an issue fester out there. They've made it clear what works and what doesn't. You have the option to return it, but not required.

 

Well according to the post in the sticky, recall process won't start until May/June. So that gives us plenty of time to enjoy our laptops and play Russian roulette with the ODD and eSATA port.

 

Wait, do you mean I could order one of these and actually receive it in the next two weeks? I'm not too concerned about the port issue I don't have use DVD's or external hard drives.

 

No, sorry. That's for current owners. No SB laptops from any manufacturers at this point are shipping that I know of. Sager and Clevo are looking at mid March to start shipment in limited quantities, obviously based on when they get chips from Intel.

 

The last thing I read on this was Intel has NO reports of consumers experiencing this issue. The reports came from OEM/ODMs, not from end-users.

I get what you are saying, however, we have been dealing with MUCH slower throughput for years before this, and there is always a chance your OS will crash or the hardware will flip a bit and hard lock forcing a reboot.

This bug is not something that will manifest itself immediately, or even next month in most cases.

I don't see this as anything different than the risk you take everyday when you use a computer rather than a pen and paper. At least this is a known risk, as opposed to a chipset just suddenly going TU for no obvious reason at all.

People are being made aware of the risks, and the bug is apparently pretty well understood. If it were my computer, I wouldn't return it until the new silicon was released. But that's me. You're free to make your own decision in that regards.