Computer Build Resource Thread - Page 150

Intel Discovers Bug in 6-Series Chipset: Our Analysis
It’s Limited to 3Gbps Ports Only
Interestingly enough the problem doesn’t affect ports 1 & 2 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.

The Fix
The SATA bug exists in hardware and there’s no way to provide a driver or firmware update that can fix it. The fix requires a metal layer change, which will result in a new hardware stepping (resulting in the ~3 week delay before replacement hardware is ready).


What About Current Sandy Bridge Owners?
On its conference call to discuss the issue, Intel told me that it hasn’t been made aware of a single failure seen by customers. 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).

Intel has already halted production of its 6-series chipsets and will begin shipping fixed versions of the chipset in late February. You can expect motherboard shortages through March at least. Intel hopes to be able to meet demand by April.

Intel is starting to have discussions with OEMs today (yep, you read that right) on how to handle the recall and when fixed hardware will be available. This is the reason why there’s currently no official, public recall plan in place. In the coming weeks I expect this to get ironed out but for now the best advice I can give existing SNB owners is to use their 6Gbps ports and wait.

On February 01 2011 03:21 Shikyo wrote:
So if I'm planning on only using 2 hard drives, this doesn't affect me at all?

On February 01 2011 06:33 PolSC2 wrote:
i5-2500k has been "deactivated" on newegg? I was just about to buy a new computer...