Intel Recall on 6-series, Cougar Point SATA, Sandy Bridge Chipset Recalled

[BRiT]

I would contact Newegg, as they seem to have excellent customer service and at least be sure to get your RMA in early so as to limit the time you'd have to wait.

 

[corduroygt]

If the error is down to 1 person wouldnt like to be him right now

Maybe he can meet up with the guy that was in charge of encrypting PS3 firmware up to version 3.55

 

[moozoo]

I agree with Grall.
Pay back for not supporting third party chipsets for their cpus.

 

[aaronspink]

its the "degrade over time" bit i dont understand i thought chips didnt wear out no moving parts and all

All chips degrade over time, it is just that normally there is enough margin that no one ever notices. In fact EVERYTHING degrades over time. It is after all the nature of the universe.

 

[aaronspink]

This is one reason why Intel crushing VIAs and Nvidia's chipset businesses is bad, even for Intel themselves.

If they hadn't done that, they could at least have continued to sell processors while replacement southbridges pass through manufacturing and out into distribution and retail channels. Now sales will if not halt, so at least slow down substantially, potentially for months depending on how long they waited after discovering this errata before they announced its existence and issued the recall order...

you mean the Nvidia chipset which just straight ate your data from day one?

 

[Grall]

Funny you should say that... I have a NForce chipset in my old core2quad box, it's never eaten anything, nor caused any problems whatsoever really.

It doesn't like me mixing different revision of corsair memory sticks (same timings, but different voltages as it turned out after reading the specs more carefully...), but that's more like my fault I should think. Right now I'm stuck with 2GB instead of 4 after two of the original corsair sticks died on me, but I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing how I can blame Nvidia for that.

Sour grapes...?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Hmmmm, I wonder when the OEMs will be able to start processing and shipping replacement boards. Looks like another month at the very earliest.

The Anandtech article mentioned one fix is to scale back the voltage going to the transistor. I wonder if this is something that could be done through a BIOS update.

Regards,
SB

 

[DarthShader]

The Anandtech article mentioned one fix is to scale back the voltage going to the transistor. I wonder if this is something that could be done through a BIOS update.

Sure, if that single transistor has it's own controled voltage line. I doubt the rest of the chip would like the lower voltage otherwise.

PS. Charlie wrote a lenghty peace on this issue. Suggested to have a tinfoil hat nearby while reading. But some of the points raised are interesting though.

 

[aaronspink]

Funny you should say that... I have a NForce chipset in my old core2quad box, it's never eaten anything, nor caused any problems whatsoever really.

It doesn't like me mixing different revision of corsair memory sticks (same timings, but different voltages as it turned out after reading the specs more carefully...), but that's more like my fault I should think. Right now I'm stuck with 2GB instead of 4 after two of the original corsair sticks died on me, but I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing how I can blame Nvidia for that.

Sour grapes...?

No, I owned one. The nvidia chipsets were pretty notorious for data corruption issues that spanned numerous generations (NF2/NF4/NF790/etc).

 

[swaaye]

I'd say that nForce4 was the worst show for NV. The network bug was really ugly and they essentially ignored it. If you installed the NVIDIA Network Manager app you would usually get TCP corruption. They never took the app out of their driver pack even though it was trouble for a lot of people.... The chipset worked fine as long as you stayed away from that firewall app.

My GF8200 mobo has been really great though (these are NF7-based). And I liked my NF2 board fine as well (clearly better than VIA stuff). I haven't used the other nForce incarnations.

nForce2's only quirk that I remember was if you installed the NV IDE driver you might run into ATAPI probs (CDROMs). But that can be said for Intel and VIA's IDE drivers too. Intel Application Accelerator anyone?

 

[Blazkowicz]

my nforce 5, lowest end variation is fine but the networking seems to be faulty in a way I don't wish to understand. it's okay as that board has a lot of PCI slots, I used a decade old free 3COM nic and now a PCIe 1x gigabit one from TP-link that costs under 10€.

I previously had a good experience with VIA KT266A and KT333, both with the USB2 southbridge, I didn't have any usb or sound blaster live issue and no instability whatsover but I did stupidly kill them on my own fault.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Well, my respect for Newegg has gone up a notch. I just got an e-mail from them notifying me that there is an issue with the Intel 6 series chipset. And as such they are extending the return window to 90 days or until replacements are available whichever is greater. In other words no expiration on the return window until the MB can be replaced.

They'll also notify me as soon as replacement motherboards are available. Fantastic customer service. It'd be nice if when the time comes they'll offer to send out the replacement first so that affected customers won't have significant downtime. But that might be too much to ask.

Regards,
SB

 

[Mize]

Well, my respect for Newegg has gone up a notch. I just got an e-mail from them notifying me that there is an issue with the Intel 6 series chipset. And as such they are extending the return window to 90 days or until replacements are available whichever is greater. In other words no expiration on the return window until the MB can be replaced.

They'll also notify me as soon as replacement motherboards are available. Fantastic customer service. It'd be nice if when the time comes they'll offer to send out the replacement first so that affected customers won't have significant downtime. But that might be too much to ask.

Regards,
SB

I received the same email.
Unless something has changed, Newegg has always allowed cross-shipment of replacements with a credit card number. Essentially you "buy" your replacement until they get the old one back. This is what I will push for with them when the replacement boards are in.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Oh that's fantastic. It'll be nice not to have to worry about downtime while the boards ship back and forth.

Seeing how Intel and everyone is dealing with this issue is such a nice relief compared to how Nvidia dealt with bumpgate.

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

Intel is a professional company. They understand honesty towards their customers is more profitable - particulary in the long term - than trying to hide your screw-ups a la bumpgate and such. Ya gotta give 'em props for that.

They hemmed and hawed a bit as I seem to recall back around the time of the original faulty 1133MHz P3 (an errata which Tom Pabst milked for years for having stumbled over by accident... ), but since then they always seem to have been quite honest and up-front with their mistakes. That builds confidence in me at least, although I do wish they would have updated firmwares for their first-gen SSDs to support trim. We sure paid through the nose for those units, so it would not have been too much to ask.

 

[digitalwanderer]

I got some PR from Gigabyte about this, and they seem to be handling it very well siding with supporting their customers. Hope to see the trend continue.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Intel is a professional company. They understand honesty towards their customers is more profitable - particulary in the long term - than trying to hide your screw-ups a la bumpgate and such. Ya gotta give 'em props for that.

but I'd say they can afford it without thinking about twice

 

[Florin]

Intel is a professional company. They understand honesty towards their customers is more profitable - particulary in the long term - than trying to hide your screw-ups a la bumpgate and such. Ya gotta give 'em props for that.

Only after they went through the try and hide screwups phase with stuff like the Pentium Overdrive compatibility debacle and FDIV. They're really good about these kinds of things now but they weren't born this way, and of course they can afford it more easily than others.

 

[swaaye]

I think just about all industries are more proactive about happenings like this these days.

 

[Davros]

I dont share your faith swaaye

weve had bumgate, around the same time there was a problem with some brand of hard drive and the company spent months in deny mode, we had apple with the iphone, first there was no problem, then it was users holding it wrong, then it was fine just the signal display was incorrect, then the sort of owned up