Intel says flaw in Series 6 Sandy Bridge chipsets

[ChappedStick]

Who buys Intel MB anyways? Other than Dell and other main stream manufactures?

Not sure why anyone building a rig would choose it.....bleh

The chipset is flawed and they are ALL made by Intel.

 

[Vdubchaos]

The chipset is flawed and they are ALL made by Intel.

Opps, sorry, thought it was Intel MB vs Chipset itself.

That's not good news, especially to people that are spending arm and a leg for SSD.

BUT its good that Intel identified this problem and gave people heads up. (assuming they are hard at work resolving it).

 

[ahurtt]

Ok now that I've had time to overreact and blow my stack then calm down a little and think about things rationally...I'm thinking that for some people this may not actually be much of an issue. I'm using my own motherboard (the Asus P8P67 Pro which I know lots of other folks around here have as well) as a reference point here and I'm thinking...

The intel chipset on this board supports 2 SATA 3.0 and 4 SATA 2.0 ports. The press release does not really specify which of the ports would be affected or if they all would. Nor does it specify the exact nature of the degredation in performance and whether or not they will eventually cease functioning completely or whether or not data errors are likely to occur as a result of the flaw. As such, it might only affects people using faster SSD's noticeably as a regular spinning HD can't come close to saturating the SATA bandwidth anyway...but still...I'm guessing on incomplete information at this point. I'm probably in the minority here being a person who is not using a SSD yet as many of the posts I've seen complaining about the P8P67Pro have to do with SSD troubles. Also this motherboard also offers 2 additional internal SATA 3.0 ports on a Marvell controller (for non-ATAPI devices) which may be unaffected. Lots more questions here than answers at this point so I'll just try to keep a cool head and wait for more details. So far my system is working fine.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Time to email ASUS, see what they have to say about RMA's.

 

[ahurtt]

Who buys Intel MB anyways? Other than Dell and other main stream manufactures?

Not sure why anyone building a rig would choose it.....bleh

It's not just Intel branded motherboards affected...It's any manufacturer which uses Intel chipsets on its Sandy Bridge based motherboards. Which is potentially any Socket 1155 motherboard on the market using the P67 chipset (which basically is all of them as far as I know, maybe including H67 as well).

 

[ZipSpeed]

I was itching to jump on the SB bandwagon but I'm glad I waited!

 

[stargazr]

Who buys Intel MB anyways? Other than Dell and other main stream manufactures?

Not sure why anyone building a rig would choose it.....bleh

I think this a design problem with the chipset, so it would apply to all SB boards. Apparently some might be ok.

 

[ahurtt]

Time to email ASUS, see what they have to say about RMA's.

I was just on Live Chat online support with one of their techs about 30 min. ago and he had not yet heard of the news. Naturally as such he was unable to give me the Asus stance on this topic and said that it was too soon yet for the company to have formulated a stance on the issue yet but that we could be hearing something in a couple days. He did not have any advice for me as to what would be the best way to make sure that I am kept informed of the company's stance other than to keep checking back.

 

[Morphine06]

Wonder what they mean by "can impact functionality". Are they talking about the functionality to properly store data? Whatever is the case, this seems like a nasty issue. My data is kinda like the most important thing in my pc.

One more reason to wait for Z68 chipset.

Z68 is still in the 6series family.

 

[Morphine06]

FYI: Newegg changed their return policy for JUST 6 series motherboards in wake of this news. I contacted them via live chat and demanded an RMA number. I got it.

 

[stargazr]

Z68 is still in the 6series family.

Yes but it's not out yet, although that's a good question. Is there still time to re-design before manufactured, how far along are MB manufacturers? Obviously the current SB boards have been in production for several months before release.

 

[ahurtt]

Z68 is still in the 6series family.

But has not begun shipping yet...so they can avoid this problem for those.

 

[FelixDeCat]

FYI: Newegg changed their return policy for JUST 6 series motherboards in wake of this news. I contacted them via live chat and demanded an RMA number. I got it.

Thanks for the info.

 

[SlitheryDee]

I'm kinda POed about this. I'm going to have to buy another MB to avoid any excessive downtime. What will I then do with the board I have now after it's been replaced with a fixed version? I'll have to buy another socket 1155 processor and build another rig out of it of course. So I'll "punish" intel for their screwup by throwing a few hundred more dollars at them...

 

[ahurtt]

FYI: Newegg changed their return policy for JUST 6 series motherboards in wake of this news. I contacted them via live chat and demanded an RMA number. I got it.

And what will you replace it with? Nothing and just wait for the new fixed chips to start shipping? The fixed chips aren't available yet.

 

[Vette73]

And what will you replace it with? Nothing and just wait for the new fixed chips to start shipping? The fixed chips aren't available yet.

Yep intel said the chips will be out in late Feb but will not hit retail channels until maybe April.

 

[ViviTheMage]

(Un?)Lucky for me there's an Asus rep that appears to be posting in this subforum! I can't imagine board makers accepting RMAs on a 'may'. The wording is really terrible here. If it was 'will', we'd all have grounds to RMA. What does 'may' mean? I should plug my ssds in, get everything up and running, and if the SATA cheese makes them roflexplooodedrama I get to eat the ssd cost because I 'may' have knowingly plugged them into a faulty motherboard? Sweet!

Who, get him in here? Haha, I want to know what to do with my P8P67 PRO board in a few months, or if I should just return it now?

 

[phillyTIM]

Livin' life on the "bleeding edge"!

 

[ViviTheMage]

FYI: Newegg changed their return policy for JUST 6 series motherboards in wake of this news. I contacted them via live chat and demanded an RMA number. I got it.

Link? They're doing returns for refunds?

I was just on Live Chat online support with one of their techs about 30 min. ago and he had not yet heard of the news. Naturally as such he was unable to give me the Asus stance on this topic and said that it was too soon yet for the company to have formulated a stance on the issue yet but that we could be hearing something in a couple days. He did not have any advice for me as to what would be the best way to make sure that I am kept informed of the company's stance other than to keep checking back.

Good info, will post a reply if they email me back though. I ASSUME Asus will send out replacements, at the cost of shipping.

 

[Morphine06]

Link? They're doing returns for refunds?

The point of my post was that they (newegg) changed their policy and are not giving refunds for 6 series boards, yet I was able to get an RMA for refund number by demanding one through the live chat. I can't promise everyone will get one, just saying it's worth a shot if you are in the same boat as me.

I think it's important to tell them you know they changed the policy. I bought it with the understanding I could return it and them changing it is beyond slimy IMO. Calling them out on this fact might have gotten me my refund.

 

[ViviTheMage]

The point of my post was that they (newegg) changed their policy and are not giving refunds for 6 series boards, yet I was able to get an RMA for refund number by demanding one through the live chat. I can't promise everyone will get one, just saying it's worth a shot if you are in the same boat as me.

I think it's important to tell them you know they changed the policy. I bought it with the understanding I could return it and them changing it is beyond slimy IMO. Calling them out on this fact might have gotten me my refund.

Where'd they change it so you cannot get a refund? I just attempted to from my P8P67 PRO I bought 2 weeks ago, and it allowed me to select refund.

 

[Numenorean]

Glad that I got an i7-870 and didn't wait for the SB chips.

 

[Pheran]

Wow, what a train wreck. I was on the fence about getting a SB board now because of the dumb H67/P67/QuickSync issues but decided to go with a cheaper, incremental AM3 upgrade last week (thank goodness!). I feel bad for everyone who has already invested.

The available info on the nature of the problem sucks, though. Let's see some full disclousure, Intel.

 

[ahurtt]

Link? They're doing returns for refunds?




Good info, will post a reply if they email me back though. I ASSUME Asus will send out replacements, at the cost of shipping.

I hope so too but I'm not holding my breath. Given the nature of the news they really should handle this as a product recall rather than making everybody go through the extra hassle and expense of an RMA process...but at this point there's not even anything to replace these boards with. Sure I could return it for a refund but then I'd be stuck with a socket 1155 CPU I'd have to figure out what to do with too. Did newegg change their policy to let people also return the CPU's they bought along with these bad Intel boards? Their typical CPU policy is replacement only...maybe they'll replace it with an 1156 model or something I dunno. They might change their policy for the motherboards considering this news but they really should allow people to return the CPU's they bought to go with them as well as the CPU is useless without a socket 1155 motherboard to put it in and as far as I know right now there are no 1155 motherboards that don't use the Intel 6 series chipset.

 

[Mem]

I saw this in CPU forums,think I'll wait for Bulldozer or April since Intel reckon by then full production of the fixed chipsets will be in production.

Glad I did not rush out and buy one.