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There's Sand in my Bridge


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From Engadget:

 

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.

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Well thats just great, first time I go buy an Intel CPU and chipset and it turns out to have issues. Maybe I could just drive down the road and ask them myself if this is true (Intel has a rather large plant out here, quite possibly making these i5/i7s)...

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I don't see the huge deal over this.

 

The fix is known and in the works - retailers will take back any affected motherboards / systems - and Sandy Bridge is still BLAZINGLY fast. If you're really that concerned use the Marvell-powered SATA ports on your mobo (since most tend to have them as an extra) instead of the Intel integrated ones in the southbridge. They should be clearly marked on most motherboards.

 

Also - I've seen around the net that only some P67 boards are affected and it may not affect H67 boards at all...

Edited by Waco

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It's only P67 board (codenamed "Cougar"). It only affects the 3Gpbs SATA II controllers. I've noticed this affecting my 4 disk RAID 10 array on my P8P67 Deluxe. I had no issues before when on the P6X58D-E with my i7 950, but now I get frequent dropped disks, BSOD's, etc. Quite random and annoying. I was wondering what the hell was going on (I thought bad overclocks?) - I'm stable Prime95, IntelBurnTest, folding, FurMark, etc. I'll have to go home and run some disk performance benchmarks and see how that goes. Maybe I won't be selling my 3ware controller card after all.

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It's only P67 board (codenamed "Cougar"). It only affects the 3Gpbs SATA II controllers.

I just read that as well.

 

This seems to be much ado about (almost) nothing. :P

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