Sandy Bridge design flaw - Intel halted on NASDAQ - updated 2/8/11.

[gregoryvg]

This does not affect the 6Gb ports, ONLY the 3Gb ports.
So make sure your Harddrives are on the 6Gb ports and wait for the new chipset and you should be ok.

I was reading the Anandtech link and someone mentioned that ASUS has a total of four 6Gb ports (two from the chipset and two from a separate Marvell 9120 controller), and I confirmed it on the ASUS website (http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Qx3PdnZI9Pq9BcIU&templete=2).

This could be lucky for me in that the ASUS board is the one they had on special w/the 2500K at Microcenter. As long as you can you plug a 3Gb peripheral in a 6Gb port (you can, can't you?) I should be okay as I can't imagine using more than four ports. At max I could see myself with a DVD R/W, Blu-Ray drive, my 2TB HDD and maybe eventually a SSD.

Am I overlooking anything?

 

[Axon]

Uhh, from the circumstances and reactions revolving around this incident, seems legit to me. But you just go right on ahead and bust out your tin foil hat.

Relax man, I'm not flaming you. I'm just saying what is almost certainly the case. Anand was told this by Intel and is repeating it. Who knows when they really became aware of this issue? While no one wants to let a busted product go to market and issue a recall when they could just delay things, they've been circulating these boards for quite some time. Otherwise I agree with your assessment, it sounds legit.

 

[Continuity28]

I was reading the Anandtech link and someone mentioned that ASUS has a total of four 6Gb ports (two from the chipset and two from a separate Marvell 9120 controller), and I confirmed it on the ASUS website (http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Qx3PdnZI9Pq9BcIU&templete=2).

Yep.

As long as you can you plug a 3Gb peripheral in a 6Gb port (you can, can't you?)

Yep.

I should be okay as I can't imagine using more than four ports. At max I could see myself with a DVD R/W, Blu-Ray drive, my 2TB HDD and maybe eventually a SSD.

Am I overlooking anything?

You're not overlooking anything. As long as you're using four or less devices, you will be fine right now.

 

[Accord99]

This could be lucky for me in that the ASUS board is the one they had on special w/the 2500K at Microcenter. As long as you can you plug a 3Gb peripheral in a 6Gb port (you can, can't you?) I should be okay as I can't imagine using more than four ports. At max I could see myself with a DVD R/W, Blu-Ray drive, my 2TB HDD and maybe eventually a SSD.

Am I overlooking anything?

No, it's a reasonable solution for the moment. You could also jury-rig the ESATA ports for some duty and given the statistics, it may be safe enough to use the optical drives on the Intel SATA 2 ports.

 

[grdax]

I was reading the Anandtech link and someone mentioned that ASUS has a total of four 6Gb ports (two from the chipset and two from a separate Marvell 9120 controller), and I confirmed it on the ASUS website (http://usa.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=Qx3PdnZI9Pq9BcIU&templete=2).

This could be lucky for me in that the ASUS board is the one they had on special w/the 2500K at Microcenter. As long as you can you plug a 3Gb peripheral in a 6Gb port (you can, can't you?) I should be okay as I can't imagine using more than four ports. At max I could see myself with a DVD R/W, Blu-Ray drive, my 2TB HDD and maybe eventually a SSD.

Am I overlooking anything?

That's what I am going to do. I only have 2 6 GB sata ports. So I will put my ssd boot drive and a second HD into the 6GB port and put DVD into the 3 GB port since I wont be using the DVD very much. This should take me until they start cranking out the replacement boards.

 

[996GT2]

I'm going to do the same. Good thing I only have 1 SSD and 1 standard HDD! The optical drive is going into the 3Gbps port since I use it about twice a year anyway.

 

[Nintendesert]

Uhh... according the Anandtech article, this is not the case. Anandtech specifically states that Intel did not know the exact nature of the bug until last week. They didn't receive complaints until they had already produced 100K units first. Even then, they weren't able to reproduce and track down what the problem was until last week. This is why they do not have a replacements in place and won't until the end of February at the earliest. This is why they are expecting sales to HALT and lose them $300M in lost sales in total (meaning the lifetime of this product) and then spend $700M in replacing all the recalls.

I don't know, but this seems pretty ethical to me.


Even with all that, there is known workaround for the meantime. If your board has another sata controller or at least the sata 3 controllers, use those. If not, buy a sata card.

Luckily this problem has some readily available work arounds due to the 6gb sata ports not being affected by this problem. Though unless Intel is going to refund the cost of a sata card it's not a reasonable solution to those with only 2 6gb sata connections.

 

[spacejamz]

guess I will plug in my SSD and 2 SATA Drives (2TB and 1TB drives) and BD writer in those 4 6Gbps ports then...

 

[Zargon]

great> 3 hdds, one dvdrw, 2 sata6 ports....

 

[Continuity28]

great> 3 hdds, one dvdrw, 2 sata6 ports....

Well... you can either wait for the replacement, or get an add-in SATA card for now.

 

[guskline]

Reminds me of the old Intel P60 bug issue. Intel did replace my chip. Also points out the complexity of new chipsets. The same thing could happen to AMD.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Sounds like they should have named it "Sandy Vagina"

 

[Hogan773]

What is really cool of Intel here is that they have known about this issue for some time now...long enough in fact that they had time to debug it, find the root-cause, implement a candidate fix, confirm the candidate fix actually works, and have started full-scale production of the corrected chipsets.

All while they were busy letting their OEM suppliers ship and sell known bad product to you, the customer.

At least AMD had the ethics to issue a stop-notice asap when they first uncovered the issue with the Barcelona TLB.

I remember well the early days of the Pentium FDIV bug, originally they required the customer to convince them that the FDIV bug would actually imperil your data (my father worked at an engineering firm at the time, he actually had to make the case to Intel that the FDIV bug would be a problem for any company relying on their chips to build bridges and buildings)...they only changed this initial policy after the fact when there was much outrage over the situation.

All you poor chaps who bought a known (to Intel) bad chipset this past month...I'd be super pissed if that happened to me. Intel knew they had bad product in the field and they sat on that info until they could make it seem like it was no big deal in the press because they had fixed chips working their way through the fab now.

We'll get new equipment thru a recall. You act as if this is like the biggest conspiracy black-ops thing in the world. I would expect Intel would take a FEW DAYS to figure out things before sounding the fire alarm, especially if they plan to recall everything. It only hurts them by allowing more stuff out into the wild to recall.

 

[Slimline]

...sigh ive already had to RMA my first board for random MOBO errors, one of them being my hard drives would randomly not detect. Other than that I am loving my rig. I am saddened by this news

 

[Gheris]

We'll get new equipment thru a recall. You act as if this is like the biggest conspiracy black-ops thing in the world. I would expect Intel would take a FEW DAYS to figure out things before sounding the fire alarm, especially if they plan to recall everything. It only hurts them by allowing more stuff out into the wild to recall.

Regardless he has a point. Sandy Bridge has been out for how long? Intel had to have known their was an issue prior to shipping. It's disappointing for the market, and the consumer that a company is knowingly releasing flawed hardware. Intel should know better.

 

[solarissf]

since I do not currently have a pc, and was waiting for this chip, am I insane to consider purchasing anyway. Then when recall goes through switch motherboard with company. Would only be using 1 6.0 SATA for HDD, and other than that all I have is dvd player. So I should be fine... am I missing something? They will switch motherboard anyway right? This way I don't have to wait months for revised products?

Tear this comment apart so I can find my flaw

 

[spacejamz]

Regardless he has a point. Sandy Bridge has been out for how long? Intel had to have known their was an issue prior to shipping. It's disappointing for the market, and the consumer that a company is knowingly releasing flawed hardware. Intel should know better.

Sandy Bridge has been out less than a month...Although disappointing, it can hardly be considered a shock. Companies have shit like this happen all the time so just move on. Creating conspiracy theories about it isn't going to change anything...

What proof do you have that they 'knowingly' released flawed hardware?

 

[Nintendesert]

Sandy Bridge has been out less than a month...Although disappointing, it can hardly be considered a shock. Companies have shit like this happen all the time so just move on. Creating conspiracy theories about it isn't going to change anything...

What proof do you have that they 'knowingly' released flawed hardware?

Well I'm sure there's going to be a lawsuit over this whole debacle and it will come out during trial with the ifs and whens knowledge of this problem occurred.

 

[mv2devnull]

great> 3 hdds, one dvdrw, 2 sata6 ports....

Make it one SSD, one DVDRW, and 4 HDD in two Intel RAID-1 arrays.

Oh wait, I have Asus and it has two Marvell ports. But:
* manual states "no ATAPI devices"
* won't support Intel RAID
* Asus boards already do show SSD/HDD issues

And controller cards tend to be other than Intel chips.


Fascinating. D:

 

[Accord99]

Regardless he has a point. Sandy Bridge has been out for how long? Intel had to have known their was an issue prior to shipping. It's disappointing for the market, and the consumer that a company is knowingly releasing flawed hardware. Intel should know better.

Barcelona was out in September 2007 and the TLB bug was announced in November. Sometimes it takes time to find out, especially one that is supposed to only become apparent after years of operation.

 

[spacejamz]

Well I'm sure there's going to be a lawsuit over this whole debacle and it will come out during trial with the ifs and whens knowledge of this problem occurred.

I can't tell if you are kidding or not...guess i have to replace the batteries in my saracasm meter or something...

 

[solarissf]

if you only use the 6.0 SATA there would be no problem correct?

 

[Nintendesert]

I can't tell if you are kidding or not...guess i have to replace the batteries in my saracasm meter or something...

You really don't think someone will attempt to sue over this? There's a reason Intel specifically mentioned they haven't seen one case of anyone being effected by this and it poses no danger to people's data. They are trying to get ahead of the suits that will arise from this.

 

[nyker96]

I wonder if mb manufactures will replace the defective 1155 boards out there.

 

[ikachu]

if you only use the 6.0 SATA there would be no problem correct?

That is correct.