Intel Annouces Recall? Sandy Bridge

[@dmin]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/01/31/intel-finds-sandy-bridge-chipset-design-flaw-shipments-stopped/

A problem requiring a "silicon fix" is bad news in the chipset business, and sadly that's what Intel is announcing. Its new Intel 6 Series chipset, Cougar Point, has been found to have a flaw, something to do with the SATA controller. Intel is indicating that the ports can "degrade over time," leading to poor i/o performance down the road. All shipments have been stopped and a fix has been implemented for new deliveries, but it sounds like recalls will be starting soon for those with this ticking time bomb silicon within. It isn't a critical problem right now, though, so if you own a Sandy Bridge Core i5 or Core i7 system keep computing with confidence while looking for a recall notice, but it is bad news for Intel's bottom line: the company is advising a $300 million hit to revenue.

Update: Jimmy sent us a chat log with an Intel customer service representative indicating that this recall only affects "some desktop boards based on Intel P67 chipset," that the H67 chipset boards appear to not be affected, but that the company doesn't have a comprehensive list yet. We've certainly seen cases where CSRs don't have all the info in this sort of situation, but still we'd advise waiting a bit before tearing your new mobo out and bringing it back to the store.

[@dmin]

Last I heard it will cost about 1.2 billion after everything is said and done.. they make about 3 billion a quarter so besides some ego damage it will fade over quickly. Investors will be quite upset and AMD trolls will be out in full force praising that bulldozer won't have this issue. Expect Intel Marketing PR to be in full force so there will be plenty of Bomp,bom bom ba, bomp ad's flooding the tv...

Honestly, Intel released SB ahead of schedule which apparently mean someone dropped the ball somewhere.

Too bad AMD has been dragging its feet with bulldozer for so damn long if they could have released in January with 1155 then they could tear up the market right now.

If you have a SB setup please feel free to update us about it.

[FAPTurbo]

I think a mountain out of a molehill is being made from the enthusiast quarters, although that's pretty much expected from hardware nerds.

And AMD fans will conveniently forget the Phenom I TLB bug. We should all be happy Intel actually came out with this so quickly, as opposed to a certain automaker who decided to sit on their problems hoping nobody would find out until they got outed a year ago.

Really, from what I've read, the degradation ranges from 5% for casual users, to 15% for those who heavily use the bus. I doubt many heavy users would be running a mid-range SB system. Plus, it only applies to SATA2 ports, so just plug the OS drive into a SATA3 port, select the drive in the BIOS' boot manager, and problem solved.

Still, enthusiasts will be RMA'ing their motherboards en-masse for something that is pretty minor. There's going to be quite a few funny stories of angry people waiting weeks for their boards.

It is a shame BD got held back, but then Bobcat and Llano are looking to be incredibly promising products. I'd rather AMD pursue the mainstream with those products instead of trying to get BD out just to appease the enthusiasts, half of which don't even buy the products they're rooting for.

[@dmin]

I agree 100% with your post.

I personally think Intel is more concerned about investors at this point in time.

[loki]

this is mostly ego and investor problems overall. intel is down $.25 over the last 5 days.

i've been seeing llano will be released in Q2 this year and BD will probably be first thing in Q3...sounds like.

[FAPTurbo]

So it seems like the 'hype' has died down, and things are falling into place. It's a bit of a bummer seeing people from the 'AMD camp' cheering about Intel customers potentially having to return their boards, or face a potential decline (or failure) in performance.

[H]Forums, that [H]ilarious enthusiast [H]ell[H]ole seems to have really been bitten by the schadenfreude bug.

[frogger]

I have an XPS 8300 with an i7 2600 on order.. Will be interesting to see how it works out.

[loki]

BD news, it will be officially "showed off" next month at a PC convention, can't think of what it is called...oh here it is, CeBit.