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  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    First?
  • Ualdayan - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Does Anandtech pick which ads get featured at the top of each article or is it random chance that this article has this ad right beside the subject: Buy the AMD HDT55TFBGRBOX Phenom II X6 Thuban <Newegg price> <Ecost price> <Bestbuy price>
  • PrinceGaz - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I very much doubt it, because when I read the article, the ad at the top was for the ASRock P67/H67 motherboard series, which I doubt will result in very many sales from the ad given the content of the article :p
  • yorynot - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Ads are picked by tracking cookies.....
  • NERo1973 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Steve Jobs advice is: "Just use the 6Gbps ports instead" :-))
  • B3an - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Maybe the people who found this issue were just holding the motherboards wrong.
  • MDme - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I thought he said: It's not a bug, it's a feature!
  • Klober - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Wrong Steve...that would be Ballmer, not Jobs. :)
  • vol7ron - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Not according to Adobe Flash, or tethering Jailbreakers, or anyone that wants to find a word in iOS Safari, or anyone that wants to have a gesture lock/unlock combination in iOS, or anyone that thinks a "find my phone" feature should be free.
  • Stas - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    too many lulz :D
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Um... Faulty Nvidia GPUs.

    Did Apple recall them and replace the defective GPUs?

    Nope.

    Too bad for the people who paid big bucks for their MacBook Pros and AppleCare.
  • ABR - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    I realize it's "cool" to diss Apple but this statement is false. You could bring your Macbook in whether it was or wasn't under warranty and get the Nvidia chip (actually the whole motherboard) replaced free of charge. I had it done a few months ago on a 3.5-year-old pro.
  • mrd0 - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    No recall...you could bring it in...if you knew about the issue. Just like with the old plastic MacBooks and the chipping problem. Apple will replace the keyboard and bezel if you happen to take it in. But they sure as hell wasn't going to notify you that they indeed had a quality problem that they would fix for free.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    It's not even that simple. Quite the contrary.

    The bottom line is that Apple didn't issue a recall and has passed the burden onto customers.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    What a misleading post.

    But, I do hope you enjoy your replacement GPU, since it's just as defective as the other one was.
  • AstroGuardian - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Suckers!
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I thought it was "You're installing it wrong."
  • Marlin1975 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    OK which is it???

    "some complaints from its customers about failures. Early last week Intel duplicated and confirmed the failure in house."

    then

    "Intel told me that it hasn’t been made aware of a single failure seen by customers."

    Oh really? So intel is not trying to hide anything you say.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    It might be the difference between retail/consumer "customer" and OEM/Board MFG "customer".

    Anyway, it looks like they spilled the beans immediately, hardly conspiracy theory fodder.
  • veri745 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    You misquoted your second quote: "Intel told me that it hasn’t been made aware of a single failure seen by end users."

    The difference is between "customers" and "end user". Intel's customers for its chipsets are OEMs and board manufacturers. End users are you and me.
  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I updated the article to clarify after seeing the post :)

    Take care,
    Anand
  • djgandy - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Well you are arguing with yourself :-)

    The article says:
    "On its conference call to discuss the issue, Intel told me that it hasn’t been made aware of a single failure seen by end users."

    Customers are Asus, Acer, Dell etc..
    End users are us.
  • Marlin1975 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    See above Anand has edited the article. I quoted before the edit.
  • mmatis - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    just borrow Steve Jobs to show them the Apple workaround for this? After all, he IS in the Intel house now. And has a lot of experience dealing with this sort of "feature"...
    }:-]
  • jonup - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Jobs:
    Why are you using the SATA2 ports when you have the new shiny SATA3 ports? You using the wrong ports. It's not our fault.
  • ImSpartacus - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    "You're plugging it in wrong."
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    You guys clearly don't know Apple well.

    "Buy this newer product."

    That's what I got when I asked Apple why OS X couldn't play audio CDs without spinning the CD drive in my Powerbook G4 at full speed, while OS 9 was silent -- spinning at the proper 1x speed. Wait and buy the next version of OS X...

    If you saw the original Mac demo and thought you were getting a computer that could talk like the demo unit.... sucker! The RAM was not upgradable nor was the 512k demo unit available for sale.

    and so forth...
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    The next version of OS X didn't fix the problem either, by the way. And, perhaps my favorite Apple shaft of all-time is the original version of OS X Server that couldn't even use Apple's own Firewire.

    Haha... Lameness of legendary proportions.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Sorry... I have to add this. The original version of OS X Server cost $500 and had no upgrade path to the "real" version (not even a paltry $50 discount).

    But, it's not a bug, it's a feature... Planned obsolescence to the point of selling broken software. If Apple sells machines with Firewire ports bundled with OS X Server (desktop towers as "servers" no less) and those ports don't work... Well, Apple did that.

    I guess they don't think like Intel does, though. No recalls there!
  • Ranyuncho - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    yeah maybe he could show you how to wrap a rubberband around that sata port to make it work right just like the fix for the iphone
  • AmdInside - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    My x58 chipset motherboard has gone bad (won't recognize all 6GB of memory). When I read reviews for motherboards on Newegg while shopping for replacement x58 motherboard, I keep seeing reports of SATA controller failing to work after a while. I wonder if this problem might be present in x58 chipset motherboards as well.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link


    If you're overclocking, try running the RAM at its normal rated speed, or lower,
    ie. don't overclock the RAM.

    Do some Googling, you'll find loads of advice on numerous forums about this issue.

    Ian.
  • Vidmo - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Guess I'll wait to put on that third party heat sink on my 2500K.

    FYI: I just did a whole bunch of decoding off DVDs and CDs this weekend on three SATA drives all at the same time, no issues (yet).

    Hmm might be time to invest in Arctic Silver stock...
  • seamusmc - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Why? Its a chipset issue, not a cpu issue.
  • nubbinator - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Everyone who has an 1155 mobo right now should be swapping out their current board for a replacement with the issue fixed. Accordingly, the CPU and heatsink will need to be re-seated, thus the need for a TIM like AS5.
  • Vidmo - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I wonder how many CPUs and/or sockets are going to get ruined with all of the swapping that's about to happen in April.

    Sounds like a business opportunity to provide a service for some people who may not be comfortable swapping out their boards. Granted these are likely to be tech inclined early adopters in any case, but you never know.

    Hmm maybe even make a premium service by purchasing boards upfront and doing the swaps right then are there for someone. No cross ship or waiting for a replacement necessary.
  • Vidmo - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    This could also be a huge opportunity for CPU heat sink manufacturers too.

    I can see the marketing hype now:

    "Swapping out that Sandy Bride MB! You’re in LUCK! Why not install the latest Turbo Genesis Fractal 2000 Cooler!”
  • Vidmo - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Bridge not Bride.
  • Vidmo - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Maybe a CPU cooler roundup next month would be a good idea.
  • Etern205 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    End users who has a Sandy Bridge system right now are mostly techies in which changing a motherboard will be a walk in the park.
    Users who don't know about Sandy Bridge are most likely still rocking a Pentium 4 and even if they have a Sandy Bridge, most will be from OEM like Dell, HP, etc. So if there is a problem all they have to do is send it back and let the manufacture to take care of it.
    Your "providing service" is a EPIC FAIL.
  • spunlex - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    "It’s like Intel’s RRoD, but without the years of denial."

    I believe you mean Microsoft's RRoD problem not Intel's.
  • Sapiens - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    The sentence makes sense to me. He's saying it's Intel's version of the RRoD.
  • marc1000 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    this "RRoD" problem belongs to Intel. but it is not a RRoD at all, this was just manner of speaking. we all understood what he meant ;)
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Apparently not all of us did =]
  • DeaDSOuLz - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    My SandyBridge Machine loses 2 drives every-time my machine goes to sleep, so I had to disable sleep mode. I wonder if this is what is causing it.....
  • nirolf - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    If those drives are big (>=1TB) you may be getting this one:
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/977178

    When you resume a computer from sleep or from hibernation, the SATA hard disk drivers require the SATA hard disks to be ready within 10 seconds. However, a large SATA hard disk may take longer than 10 seconds to be ready. In this situation, the resume operation times out.

    I had the same issue as you and that patch solved it.
  • inslee - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I had the same issue on my 2TB drives and that hotfix from MS fixed it for me.
  • Mad1723 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Ok, now it is really annoying! I have my i7 2600k, my Corsair Vengeance, but I can't order my Maximus IV Extreme motherboard and probably won't be able to for the next weeks :'( It was out of stock for the last 2 weeks, and now this bug will just push it further away from me! My poor CPU is looking at me from the shelf.

    Well, I guess I'm in for a month of wait :(
  • marc1000 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    send that cpu to me, I don't bother waiting

    just kidding. =D

    I was postponing any purchase due to high launch prices, but now I will have to wait until Z68 arrives... (wich is a safer bet anyway).
  • Gigantopithecus - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    ...why would anyone buy a Z68 board for an SNB cpu when Bulldozer will follow on its heels a month or two later? I could understand not wanting to wait the six months from the initial launch of SNB to Bulldozer's ETA, but now, well, I expect sales of SNB cpus to drop like a rock until BD's performance is more well-known.
  • theangryintern - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    With AMD's latest track record, Bulldozer's performance will be equal to Nehalem. I'd love to be proven wrong, but lately they're latest'n'greatest has been on par with Intel's previous generation.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Great! I'm glad to hear that AMD will continue to be far better in I/O, especially USB, than Intel's last TWO generations.
  • Tegeril - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Let me know how your USB overclocks for better performance are going. Really? USB performance?
  • HangFire - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    No need to overclock on AMD. You see, AMD runs USB 3 on PCIe 2.0 at 2.0 speeds, and you can have more than 2. Intel 1156 runs USB on PCIe 2.0 at 1.x speeds (2.5MT/s) and 1155 still has a limited number of channels compared to 890GX/FX.

    That is why you see so many AMD boards in industrial control and removable storage appliances. You have to go to the pricey X-58 motherboards to get equivalent USB connectivity and throughput.

    So, yes, really. USB performance.
  • Zoomer - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    That's ok if I can get i7 920 level performance at $100, without factoring in overclocking. Have no need for the IGP crap on die anyway.
  • austonia - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    so everyone who has bought a SB-based motherboard, PC or laptop is going to have to return it? that's a lot of wasted hardware if the new chip can't be retrofitted. and expensive. even a billion dollars seems like a lowball number to fully replace everything. glad Intel owned up to the problem though.
  • RikkiTikkiTavi - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Thank goodness ASUS put an extra Marvel S-ATA controller on their boards. Four 6-GB ports should be plenty. Lets' see if I can maybe get some of my money back, anyway.

    Or alternatively, a free T-Shirt would be nice.
  • jhony_richter - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    where you read that is a Marvel S-ATA is Asus boards?
    you know if in the Asus n53sv -A1 notebook have a Marvel S-ATA?
  • aarste - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Is it possible Intel could implement the fix for the 23.976 fps bug into the new chipsets going into production, or is this a problem in the CPUs themselves?
  • nikclev - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    As I understand it, there is no 23.976 "bug" to be fixed. That is to say that the P/H67's are working as intended in this regard, providing you with 24fps.

    In other words, they didn't promise it to you, so you won't get it "fixed"

    I believe I understand your point, however. While I'm sure it's possible to do, it would add additional time and R&D and validation costs. I really doubt Intel will add any "new" features in a bugfix, especially a bugfix of this magnitude. (After all, this is -huge-... every single shipped P/H67 motherboard/laptop will have to be sent back, and the northbridge replaced.)

    On a totally separate note, I read this this morning and was -very- PO'd.... My brand new shiny SB motherboard is sitting at home, waiting for my RAM to arrive so I could assemble my system. And of course, I bought an Intel brand motherboard, which comes with only 2 6Gbs Sata ports... Kinda sucks as I have three hard drives and a DVD drive I intended to attach to it...
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I'm sure Intel will get around to 23.976 versus 24... perhaps in the next socket. Maybe they'll call it Socket 1154.
  • gunblade - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    No, it is only a metal respin, no logic level change.
  • ahurtt - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Thanks for the info and for being on top of this so quickly!
  • pa-fun - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    The P67 here seems to be working fine so far. We'll see what the future brings.

    Would have been nice if we had more tech details, but they kind of cut you off. Everybody else seems to be focusing on the financial details.

    One answere to a comment earlier - yes Intel talks about OEM's as customers and then refers to end users in a different category. At this point they "know of no end user's with the problem". Given how may bugs there are with Sandy Bridge right now, probably a tough thing to know absolutely.

    Their exact numbers are 5% failure at 3 years in a typical notebook enviroment (I assume that's a hot system). Their 24/7 number is 15% at 3 years. On a normal motheboard with good cooling - who know what the rate would be.

    So much fun....
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    > At this point they "know of no end user's with the problem". Given how may bugs there are with Sandy Bridge right now, probably a tough thing to know absolutely.

    There's a big difference between saying "I know of no end users with the problem" and saying "I know that no end users have the problem."

    All the were saying is that they were not aware of any end users who had had the problem.
  • lasalasa - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I have an Asus P8P67 Deluxe. It has four SATA 2's and four SATA 3's(2 used by Intel's PCH and 2 by third party Marvel controller)

    Is it safe for me to use the SATA 3 connectors via the Intel PCH? or are they referring to the third party controller?

    Any chance of getting an Intel rep to comment on this?
  • ahurtt - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    The article plainly stated that it is the Intel SATA 2 (3Gb/s) ports that are affected by this problem. None of the other ones are affected. Using the Intel SATA 3 and the Marvell SATA 3 ports you should be fine.
  • ahurtt - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Take note though, I have the P8P67 Pro which sounds like it has the same number and type of controllers your Deluxe does and the Asus website has a note on the motherboard specs that says the Marvell ports are not for use with ATAPI devices (which I take to mean, don't hook up CD/DVD drives to them). Maybe you already knew that but I just happened to notice it today.
  • anubis44 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Sorry, I know it's immature and ungracious, but I just can't resist... ha ha ha!

    Well, I guess there IS some justice in the world after all.
    Go AMD.
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I wonder if these types of comments will ever stop bothering me.

    Seriously folks, they're just companies. If they provide the product you're looking for at a price you're looking for, then buy their product. If their competitor has a product with price, performance, and features more suited to your needs, go for that. Especially with Sandy Bridge out at a compelling price point, there are valid markets of people for each of the companies' products.
  • seamusmc - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Gary Key has been helping folks on HardOCP's and Xtreme's forums with ASUS mobo issues and SATA issues have been a significant issue. He said in a post on HardOCP that this was the first he heard of it and that he had been told the issues would be resolved with a frimware update as well as an update to Intel's RST drivers.

    This makes sense though, many people are having no issues at all, while a few are having inexplicable issues with SATA. I know a few folks have posted some very disappointing benches for their drives, ssd or hdd, while others show very good perf.
  • GeorgeH - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Doesn't HM65 have two 6Gbps SATA ports? If those are unaffected, I don't see why laptop makers could just not use the broken 3Gbps ports; most laptops don't support more than two SATA devices. The only problem I see would be eSATA connectivity, but USB 3.0 should take care of that.
  • Mailia - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Note, MacBook Pros are safe and sound. It's an issue with Cougar Point, which is for the desktops.
  • anubis44 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    If that's true, why are Sandybridge notebooks being delayed now?
  • cbass64 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    CPT is the chipset for SNB laptops and desktops...and servers. But the laptop boards only have 2 internal SATA ports and they are both the unaffected Gen3 ports. The ODD and e-sata ports are Gen2 so it's possible that they are affected by this issue.
  • Squuiid - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    From Macrumors.com:

    While initial reports had suggested that the issue is limited to desktop versions of the platform, Cougar Point is in fact used in both desktop and mobile chipsets based on Sandy Bridge, indicating that the recall could also delay available of Apple notebooks such as MacBook Pros.

    http://www.macrumors.com/2011/01/31/intel-announce...
  • blowfish - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I'm so glad this didn't happen to AMD! At least Intel have tons of money, but it might have been very serious for AMD.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Even though I mock Intel, I wouldn't wish this on any company. Perhaps the only benefit is that small firms may benefit from refit jobs. I hope the OEM's spread the wealth and not totally centralize refits.

    Either way, UPS and FedEx will probably be the primary beneficiaries here.

    Perhaps the takeaway here is, a breakneck development pace sometimes results in broken necks. I hope both AMD and Intel learn enough not to get into this position again... remember the Phenom (non-II) cache issue? The Intel Pentium Floating Point bug? I guess stuff like this is inevitable in this industry... just hope it stays occasional.
  • evan_s - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    You describe it as "In these situations the problem doesn’t appear on every chip in every situation, but on every nth chip out of every n x somereallybignumber chips." which doesn't seem to match what Intel has said and doesn't match with their behavior either. They wouldn't be recalling ALL chipset's they've produced if 1 in 100 had a problem.

    The issue sounds more like electromigration, or some similar issue, which causes it to wear out and fail over time and will likely affect all chipset's produced eventually. This fits more with the recall and the need to rev the chip.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration
  • radializer - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    A "Statistical" failure is exactly what is mentioned in the article - and that is exactly what you have described.

    A statistical failure mode (and yes, electromigration *is* such a mode) is one that affects some percent of your units over time.

    Assuming your example of a 1% fail rate @ a given time ... if a million units were shipped, you cannot ever predict which exact units will fail ... but you can predict that roughly 10,000 of them would fail.

    Therefore, the recall has to target all units ... one cannot selectively recall the units expected to fail, as one doesn't know how to choose them.
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    > They wouldn't be recalling ALL chipset's they've produced if 1 in 100 had a problem.

    What, would they just recall the 1 in 100 that happen to be affected? That's impossible, given that they have no way of knowing which specific boards would need to be recalled and which would not. As mentioned in the article, the problem does not manifest itself until after a long-term period of use; it is not apparent right away whether the board may turn out to be faulty.

    If a random 1 in 50 frozen White Castle hamburgers would cause the eaters to contract a virulent disease, they wouldn't go through the supermarkets and people's freezer's with some sort of medical scanning equipment to see specifically which ones were infected and then recall that 2%, they would just recall all the burgers that potentially COULD be affected, including the 98% that are disease-free.
  • spigzone - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    "If you're going to have to wait to buy anyway I would recommend waiting until Z68 motherboards hit the market."

    Bulldozer anyone?
  • seamusmc - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I've been waiting for the issues with P67 to get cleared up before finally upgrading after years of waiting and was about to grab an Asus Sabertooth P67. I have been using a QX9650 and X6800 for years and they've been great. Before these I had those awesome Athlon 64 x2's.

    Now that I have to wait anyway, (going for the Z68 now), I've started digging into Bulldozer and its looking to be very interesting.
  • LostPassword - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Glad I decided to wait for z-series.
  • warisz00r - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Now I have to wait even LONGER to replace my 3-year old Acer shittop.
  • aka_Warlock - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    What impact would this have had on AMD's sales if they could kick Bulldozer out right now? :)

    So much for "Intel inside" i guess... not the first time they messed up either.
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Both companies mess up occasionally. Remember the original Phenom's TLB bug?

    I mean, I'd love to see Bulldozer come out right now, too, and I hope it performs nicely, but this isn't something to start hating a company for. They did a reasonable amount of testing, and the problem didn't show up, and now that they know there's a problem they're doing a recall. They're being a responsible company.
  • CharonPDX - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Apple only uses two SATA ports. Why not just use the "bad" stock that already exists and just use only the 6 Gbps ports? (Unless Apple is finally going to add an eSATA port, in which case, hooray, and the delay is acceptable.)

    Same goes with the Mac mini, at least. Although the iMac now has three SATA ports in use (one for optional SSD, one for spinning HD, one for optical,) so iMac can't get updated yet.
  • blowfish - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    It's also sad to think of all those MOBO's being chunked, when they could obviously be used by people knowing their limitations (i.e. restircting SATA connected items to the 6GBps ports) I'm sure there would be plenty of takers for bargain 6 series boards - but Intel have to protect their margins, I suppose.
  • gstrickler - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    They won't be thrown out, they'll replace the chipset on the motherboard and use it as a replacement unit.
  • Pylon757 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Probably not that easy to desolder. The chipsets are BGA and those aren't exactly easy to desolder without busting the whole board.
  • piroroadkill - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    It's possible, I've seen BGAs being reflowed, but these are probably much more fiddly.
  • havoti97 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    At least they didn't call it a feature :D
  • ET - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    It's a good thing for Intel that the main competition for its chips are other Intel chips. By the time AMD has something competitive on the market this problem will be long gone.

    Thanks for the comprehensive coverage, Anand.
  • Maverick494 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I was about || that close to ordering a laptop based on the sandybridge intel setup, but now this makes me wonder if they are going to be affected as well.
  • NERo1973 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Steve Jobs advice is: "Just use the 6Gbps ports instead" :-))
  • jedighost - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    if you use not so many HDDs, get one of these, drop a PCI-E Sata expansion card into it for your optical drives, and voilá, you might have gotten a system for cheap (and use the 6Gbs ports for you HDD/SSD).
  • jedighost - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    guranttess= guarantees
    you HDD= your HDD
  • xeopherith - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I just bought an SNB board this week. Damnit.
  • Pugnate - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    What if I still bought the board and just used the first two SATA ports? I'd be fine for a lifetime right? I can't wait till April.
  • Rasterman - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    The fact that the first 2 SATA ports aren't effected really needs to be pushed up into the headlines more, because of this I doubt I will deal with the hassle of returning my board, I only use 1 port, and probably won't even use 2, let alone 6. I would guess the majority of users will not use over 2. It would also be much easier and cheaper for me to simply pop in a SATA card rather than switching out a MB.

    The flaw sucks and should have been caught, but I respect Intel for being so open about this issue. They could have easily buried it or played it off to other causes down the line.
  • s44 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Boot drive, data drive, optical drive: that's three.

    Incidentally, Fermi actually works. Perhaps Anand meant Phenom?
  • bigboxes - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Anand meant Fermi. Maybe it is you who's forgotten nVidia's recent troubles.
  • omelet - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    The Fermi that was released works, but it was delayed for a long time due to design flaws that got revised before release.
  • MrBlonde - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I was just about to order an Asus P68Pro. I still will order one today, but now I know what to bias towards if my drives start to crash/disappear from OS.
  • MrBlonde - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    P8P67 Pro model, typo from above... and now it's product page is not accessible on Newegg.com
  • tasteelingus - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Anybody happen to know if it's the controller that has the problem or the individual ports? In other words, is the entire bank of 3 GB/s ports going to fail at once, or will it be one at a time?
  • laok - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Since the 2 SATA III are not affected, they can just use 1 of these two for optical drive, and the other 1 for for hard drive.

    Generally, only 2 sata ports will be used for a laptop.
  • Penti - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Because they are recalling the chipsets? 3Gbps ports are still a feature of HM65/7 or the mobile chipsets, and lots of latops use the esata feature. Which with this chipset is the bad 3Gbps ports. Generally it's pretty common using at least three SATA-ports.
  • Cr0nJ0b - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I'm wondering what the impact of this would be with Intel's RAID running? On my current system I have a 4 drive sata RAID set running with a SSD boot device and a couple of Opticals. I'm thinking...what happens over time if the RAID system starts seeing more and more SATA errors. I would guess that there would be a chance that write's would fail, but wouldn't there also be a higher chance that you would see data corruption of the volume? If the SATA buss is throwing errors all the time, what is the probability that their error correction would miss a couple of them and hose the volume. Having a sata drive or port go down would be bad, but corrupting a volume would be catastrophic.
  • bigboxes - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    This is not good news. My condolences to x67 users. What an inconvenience!
  • cmdrdredd - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Things like this happen from time to time. I am not a beta tester. I don't want first run production hardware until it has been thoroughly tested and everything cleared up.
  • krumme - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I know its not intended, but from my view, this article taste a little bit Intel PR ish.
  • bigboxes - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    It's not something that AnandTech has uncovered. Anand is just reporting the problem and given his analysis. Now, you understand the nature of the problem, the costs involved to fix the problem and what fixes will have to be made. What else do you want? Do you want to hear that Intel was bad in not catching this defect sooner? To me it looks like Intel did not cover this up (not like they really could) and will have to pay considerably for the fix. It's a PR nightmare. Doing it this way Intel is just "ripping the band-aid off" and getting it over with.
  • krumme - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    What is the purpose of Anandtech?

    I want to hear something i dont know, - get some new insight. And i have high expectations.

    Anand have a personal network to get more views on the subject, and more perspective, economical consequences in detail, technical reasons, and effects for the market.

    No need to rush the article. Like it is, it could just have been written by Intel itself (except that Anand is just plain better explaining it :)) - but its the same taste. We dont have to be naive about this, Intel knows (expect) what Anand can and will do in this situation. I am not saying its an easy balance.
  • bigboxes - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    You're getting to worked up over nothing. I'm sure this article will drop off the front page as soon as people get their information. It is important since so many (on this site) are currently upgrading to the new platform.
  • krumme - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Well apparently not :). 1B is not a small issue in my world. So is the small timelime between promised volume and the announcement. This is news as you can see.
  • marraco - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    From the buyer viewpoint:
    How we will be able to know if a motherboard on the shelve contains a failed chipset, or a debugged one?

    They should rename the chipset, so it is easy to tell the difference. Otherwise they are hoping to catch unaware customers, and bet that some will never take notice until the guarantee is gone.

    And please, don't tell me that all the mothers will be recalled. I know that on my country many retailers will never be aware of this problem.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Maybe if intel wasnt playing games with their own proprietary crap they are eager to foist all over us, they wouldnt have dropped the ball on USB3/SATA3.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    RIMM anyone?

    Yeah, I can't help but thinking, if they made ALL the ports SATA 3, they would have been OK. Of course, cost issues had to win out...
  • Burticus - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    You know someone at AMD is screaming their head off that Bulldozer isn't currently shipping. They could have had a free month with no competition from Intel.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Hmm... this makes me wonder what Intel will do to hold down the fort. Price cuts on Nehalem and X-58, anyone? I'll be watching MicroCenters prices carefully!
  • PingLu - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    does anyone have information concerning mobile motherboards especially those going out to lenovo and dell? Are they producing their own ones or are they using SATA parts from Intel?

    Will the new Latitude model from Dell (65x0) be delayed?!

    thanks for any kind of information about this!!
  • EddyKilowatt - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    So, any clues as to what they actually found wrong, down at the die/metal level?

    I'm curious what would cause gradual deterioration of performance in a nominally digital system.

    Electromigration? Trapped/injected charge? Thresholds drifting for some reason? (Can you tell I know a little bit about hardware, but almost nothing about 32nm fabrication or physics?)
  • bernpi - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Okay that's really bad for intel and all the users who will replace their motherboards. I thought about it and i will not replace my motherboard! I have my SSD and HDD on the 6Gbps ports allready and just the DVD drive on the old SATA 2 ports (and i use it only once in a while). There is still the marvell controller on my board which i could use. So i don't take all the trouble in replacing my motherboard.
  • Sparky66 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Too bad Intel was too greedy and wouldn't extend the license to nVidia to keep making chipsets. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess.
  • HangFire - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Interesting thought, but it would only apply to C2D. Too much AMD IP in those Sandy Bridge and Nehalem on-board memory controllers.
  • Makaveli - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    I feel for all you guys that built SB systems.

    This is yet another case of early adopters getting screwed!!!!!

    Is anyone taking notes yet?

    This is the reason you don't buy first gen products regardless of performance!

    And it shows bugs like this can happen to even a large company like intel with all their testing.

    Had this of been amd and not intel I can probably say we could have started to dig their grave already.
  • sor - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    DUDE. I'd totally pay $50 for a top of the line P67 with potentially defective SATA 2 ports. I was going to use my own LSI card anyway. Too bad they're not offering them cheap.
  • vol7ron - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Yeah. Screw the recall, just send a brand new one if they want one.

    I'm so curious how Z68 will be priced. It sounds like it's going to be much higher than P67 for that added OC capability.

    Intel should just say, "screw it ... we're dropping P and sticking to Z"
  • CZroe - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Would a Macbook Pro actually use the additional ports? If not, I can't see them getting delayed. Also, some of the costs may be negated by using the chips in refurb boards and notebooks with only 2x SATA bays. Most contries have laws against using refurb parts in new products but they could always donate them as laptops to needy children or something for a tax write-off.
  • Pylon757 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    Can't they just give everyone who bought a defective board a free PCI-E SATA controller?
  • wolfman3k5 - Monday, January 31, 2011 - link

    As a disgruntled owner of a Sandy Bridge Platform (Intel Core i7 2600K + ASUS P67EVO), and a man who spent his hard earned money on this crap, I would like to say this to Intel: Fuck you Intel, I'm switching to AMD. Last time it was the fucking socket on the previous LGA1156 platform, this time are the SATA ports, what's next? It's costing me money, and I don't like it. I take the "lesser" performance of a AMD Phenom X6 1100T over this crap any day. Once again: Fuck you Intel, I had enough, I'm switching to AMD.
  • silverblue - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Whoa, calm down... you can get a refund. I'm sure fixed boards will be available soon enough if you would prefer to hang onto that SNB.

    (P.S. I'm jealous as I don't have the money to purchase such a system. :P)
  • anubis44 - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Welcome to the Rebel Alliance, wolfman3k5. You'll be very happy with your Phenom II X6. I've had my Phenom II X2 550BE with all 4 cores unlocked, all clocked to 3.6GHz running smooth as butter for the last 2 years on a Gigabyte GA-790X UDP3 crossfire motherboard. CPU cost me $120 and the board was about $130. Looking at putting a couple of 6950s into it next, since the machine is far more GPU than CPU limited. It's been funny watching people upgrade 3 sockets during the time I've kept my trusty socket AM2+ motherboard... now you'll be able to enjoy great performance, reliability, reasonable prices and acceptable upgrade cycles for your mobo, too!
  • catommy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    regularly having to switch around sata ports when ssd drive not found in bios could these be related also my optical drive also not working for some time now mb msi P55 gd80 processor i5 655k ssd kingston snvp325s264gb dvdcd gh22ls40 ata my so called remedy is flash cmos when necessary including switching out sata cables from devices and ports anyway my dvd drive has not worked again ssd still ticking are these one in the same because of type of chip just wondering
  • papapapapapapapababy - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    intel has such a shiity chipsets is mind blowing.... my first builds i used VIA chipsets ( from the barton er, till my old amd64 x2builds) super reliable, never a problem. first intel builds with intel chimpsets? million problems, sata problems, cold boot problems, errata this errata that, microcodeupdate this update that, use the ports 1, but not the 2345, raid corruption, swap to ide mode... TERRIBLE XD
  • HangFire - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Via KT266A may have been legendary, but KT266 was epic... fail.

    It was one year of BIOS updates before I had a semi-stable machine. By that time, it was nearly obsolete.

    Via chipsets, no more, no thanks.
  • Beenthere - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Intel makes so much money, often via violation of law, that this little financial set-back won't bother them at all.
  • Teknobug - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    So that explains why a handful of P67 boards disappeared off Newegg.
  • ghitz - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    A handful? All of them.
  • wolfman3k5 - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    It doesn't matter how I try to spin this in my head, I just can't eat this crap out. The positive spin that Anandtech is trying o push is also laughable at best: "wait for the Z68, a great chipset...". Aham... the P67 was supposed to be good as well. I mean, all new AMD 8xx series chipsets have 6 SATA 6Gb/s ports by default that work perfectly fine, yet Intel had to give us only two SATA 6Gb/s ports, and four SATA 3Gb/s ports. Aren't you getting a little greedy Mr. Intel? I mean, I don't know what to call it? Divine Intervention or Karma? But you're loosing about 1 Billion Dollars Mr. Intel on this fiasco. It is 2011, and a hardware bug like this is simply unacceptable. If I didn't know any better I would say that shit happens, and something more sophisticated like say Cache issues or memory controller issues, or some sort of stupid complex bug, would be acceptable. But SATA port issues? And if I'm reading right it's all because of the manufacturing process!!! I mean, Mr. Intel, how fucking greedy are you mate? Read my lips: GET IT RIGHT THE FIRST FUCKING TIME! Honest to God! I swear, I don't give two donkey craps and 5 cents for the replacements that are coming out! I mean, this is the question that all of you that have bought into Sandy Bridge (myself included) should be asking: is Intel's colossal fuck up worth the time that you'll be spending disassembling your computer, going to the post office, waiting for about two weeks on a replacement, then reassembling your computer with the new board (and God forbid, maybe during shipping the replacement got screwed u), then re-installing Windows (hopefully it won't be necessary, but most people will have to anyway). Hey Mr. Intel, are you feeling my anger, mate? I mean, I'm pissed, so pissed that instead of doing all the work that I've just described, I'm switching to your competitor. I got a Phenom II X6 1100t + a Gigabyte 890FX on the way from NewEgg. By the way, the Phenom II X6 1090t is $199.99 now, and the Phenom II X6 1100t is $239.99. Sweet prices! I just wanted to enjoy my workstation with Sandy Bridge, and do my software development, and use all of my 6 hard drives + two Blu Ray burners... That's all I wanted. And I need this system to be bullet proof reliable. I hope that FOR CRYING OUT LOUD an Intel rep. will talk about this issue to us, the fricking enthusiast community!
  • ghitz - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Agreed! It seems to these titans that our time is worth s***t.
  • ghitz - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    I did RMA all my stuff back to the egg.
  • ClagMaster - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    In the meantime, I expect there will be an opportunity to get a discounted Sandybridge until some P67/H67 become available with the fixed chipset.

    I agree, this kind of bug stinks.

    If you think this bug is bad, do you remember the bug the first Phenom processors had. Required a BIOS fix and operated at slower speed than it should.

    AMD did not recall these processors. Intel, however, is recalling their bad chipsets.
  • ghitz - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Very true, probably AMD could have been in a really bad financial situation if they initiated a full recall, on the other hand Intel has the resources.
  • ClagMaster - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Having Intel confess the failings of the P67/H67 after investigating this bug, then offering replacement motherboards is a very professional act of an industry leader.

    Intel really does stand behind their products with a SOLID warranty.

    I was about ready to invest in a H67 motherboard but decided to wait awhile.

    I am not a first adopter because of similar problems I have experenced over the years. I prefer to wait until a Revision 2 or 3 motherboard is available before purchasing.
  • peternelson - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link


    Prior to the official announcement of Sandy Bridge, most people continued buying systems with last generation processors (salespeople understandably wanted to hit their holiday sales targets so would not mention the impending obsolescence even if they knew, to avoid losing the sale).

    As for myself I knew about Sandy Bridge but needed something now, with many pcie lanes for I/O, and saw the socket 2011 systems put back a quarter and still far away, so purchased an X58 based system, with the idea to build a small cluster of SNB for AVX math when they became available.

    Then came the official announcement and release of the new models with impressive benchmarks, reviews and news coverage.

    Now that the support chipset for SNB in is known to be faulty I don't think people will want to buy systems with inherently faulty motherboards (which have the related hassle of later swapout, maybe having to do without your entire computer while parts are replaced), and in the case of UK seller Scan Computers (likely others too), it has suspended sales of SNB boards and systems already until further notice.

    Until the silicon respin, putting the replacement chips on motherboards and distribution of those boards into the channel in volume (which I guess would take perhaps 2 months) this will likely almost put a halt on sales of performance systems as informed buyers hold off their purchases, and distributors don't want the hassle of processing returns of even more parts so will suspend sales.

    By that time the other new chipset Z68 supporting both onboard video AND overclocking will be almost with us and I can't see many people investing in the existing chipset when the more flexible one is so close, again delaying purchases. Even if fixed, the original two chipsets may have a tarnished reputation from these problems (could I be sure my supplier gave me a fixed respin one vs the original ones that could fail sometime in future?).

    Looking at the Intel stock price on Nasdaq, I don't see much of a drop in INTC stock yet.

    In my view the cost of this problem is not just the estimated replacement cost of 1 billion, but also the missing, lost or delayed sales of new processors and systems over the rest of quarter1.

    This affects not just shipments of the chipsets with the bug, but the new processors, since nobody has an error free board in which to run them until the fix is done and distributed. Rare possible sensible case to still buy one might be people who need to get coding apps that use AVX instructions and still hope to ship to their own release schedules, although such developers will be a very small minority and will need to avoid using the unreliable SATA ports. Even if all those delaying buyers eventually still go with Sandy Bridge (rather than consider waiting for AMD Bulldozer), the income from them will be late, resulting in interest charges or foregone earned interest, and delays in return on investment made in design and fabrication for these new generation processors and chipsets.

    I don't yet see any regulatory news announcement giving investors an update to revised Quarter 1 sales estimates that I would expect over something like this. So far this SATA bug news is in the early adopter tech community on sites like Anandtech, but most of the finance types and investors may be unaware. I would think Intel should be giving them some heads up about the impact on revenue streams. Once the story is disseminated I imagine the stock would take a temporary drop, but Intel does deserve credit for recognising and owning up to the problem quickly.

    I share Anand's conclusions about the puzzling segmentation of new chipset features and will wait for Z68. Combining this with the SATA bug discovery, I feel better about having bought into X58 as a step towards socket 2011.
  • Zoolookuk - Tuesday, February 1, 2011 - link

    Meh - I'm still pretty stoked about my MBP with an i7 and a 512GB SSD... Sandybridge can wait a while before making it obsolete.
  • JohnZoidberg - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link


    IS INTEL INSANE?
    (sorry for the caps, but this is insane)
    "The fix requires new hardware, which means you will have to exchange your motherboard for a new one. "
    "Interestingly enough the problem doesn’t affect ports 0 & 1 on the 6-series chipset. Remember that Intel has two 6Gbps ports and four 3Gbps ports on P67/H67, only the latter four are impacted by this problem."
    So why would they just don't give customers a choice.
    choice 1:
    25 or 50 $ because you can only use 2 ports
    choice2 :
    get 0 $ and a new MBO
    I mean WTF... They will recall all MBOs? And I would guestimate that 80+% of the users use 1 or 2 ports.
  • ghitz - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Maybe there's more to the failure fiasco we don't know about.
  • HangFire - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    "So why would they just don't give customers a choice."

    Intel wants to avoid this conversation:

    Customer- I just got a great deal on a system from XYZ Corp, but FooTool says I need the M/B exchange.

    Intel- Sorry, the $50 has already been payed out on the M/B.

    Customer- What? I thought this was new stuff! I'm never buying Intel again!
  • bckai - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    http://event.asus.com/2011/SandyBridge/notice/
  • ash9 - Wednesday, February 2, 2011 - link

    Both of these statements cant be true!!!

    Intel mentioned that after it had built over 100,000 chipsets it started to get some complaints from its customers about failures.

    Intel expects that over 3 years of use it would see a failure rate of approximately 5 - 15% depending on usage model. Remember this problem isn’t a functional issue but rather one of those nasty statistical issues, so by nature it should take time to show up in large numbers (at the same time there should still be some very isolated incidents of failure early on).

    asH
  • HangFire - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    "some complaints" == "very isolated incidents of failure early on".

    I don't see any problem here.
  • banzaigtv - Thursday, February 3, 2011 - link

    I was really looking forward to getting a Sandy Bridge i7 system and this came up. Gee, that reminds me that NO ONE SHOULD BUY NEW TECHNOLOGY UNTIL IT HAS BEEN OUT FOR SIX MONTHS. I have planned to get my new PC in March. I refuse to wait until April. I had plans for the Dell XPS 8300. Now I'm throwing that out the window. I am still getting a new PC four weeks from now as scheduled. My eyes are now set on the HP Pavilion Elite HPE-570f with the AMD Phenom II X6 1090T. Intel is losing another customer; I'm switching to AMD.
  • banzaigtv - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link

    Well, I've been thinking and maybe I was being a bit too harsh on Intel. Maybe it's just that it's too early to jump into new technology, especially since sometimes new CPUs or motherboards can have bugs after release. Honestly, I still want a Core i7, so I'll just get a Core i7 950 since it has been out for a while and proved that it is reliable with no current issues. It beats all AMD Phenom II X6 CPUs in benchmark tests anyway.
  • Teknobug - Friday, February 4, 2011 - link

    Even the Phenom II X4's beat the X6's.
  • wukillabee - Tuesday, February 8, 2011 - link

    Look at Anand, working in a Jay-Z reference.
  • alg - Monday, March 14, 2011 - link

    Hi Experts

    I am awaiting shipment of a ASUS all in one PC with the CoreI5-2400S chip.
    I came across this issue article while browsing, called ASUS and after waiting about 30min, the tech guy said no 'all in one's' are affected and hung up before I can follow up with a qeustion.

    After reading the article, I can see that why All in one PC's are not affected as they have limited expansion capability.

    To make sure that both HD and DVD drive are on the unaffected port is it possible to get this infor from windows ?
    WOuld there be any other reason I should be worried about the bad ports being on th emother board for the long run given its an 'all in one' ?
    Asume memory card readers and USB 3 ports are not affected.

    Thanks, just want to make sure before my return period runs out.

    Al
  • andyraf - Sunday, April 17, 2011 - link

    The article said: "I’m guessing once the fixed chipsets are available we’ll have replacement plans from all of the motherboard manufacturers."

    That doesn't appear to be true for Intel boards. I received my DH67BL the same day the recall was announced. Intel initially said to hold off while they figured out what the replacement plan would be. Then they said I had to go through Tigerdirect (who won't even talk to me about it because it's outside the 30-day return window). After many days of going back and forth Intel has offered to replace the board under warranty, but I need to pay to box and ship my old board back, and there's no schedule for when they will send a new board (so if I send my old board back in first, I could be without a PC for an indeterminate amount of time). Based on this experence I really can't recommend an Intel manufactured board to anyone.
  • callmesissi - Saturday, June 16, 2018 - link

    after using my intel dh67cl motherboard for around 3 years or regular use - i bought it in 2012 along with a 3770k - today all the sata 3gbps ports died. after wondering what was happening i found this article. i am sad, but mostly angry... my seutp is a 256gb ssd, 1 2tb hdd, 1 dvd, 1 bluray and 2 more 1tb hard drives for my videos. what can i do? my i7 3770 is blazing fast and i have no need (and no money) just to go and buy a new computer. there are no new motherboard like mine (4 sticks of ddr3 ram) . its a LOT of money and now its crippled.

    did i mention i am angry... grrrrr

    would a pcie card with sata ports work? or does it kill my other ports? any sugestions are welcome. i hope someone read this. after all, its an article from 2011

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