Gigabyte Announces 6-series Motherboard Replacement Program
Yesterday Intel announced the largest stop shipment/recall I can remember it ever making (excluding FDIV). The product in question? All 6-series chipsets, a necessary part of any Sandy Bridge (aka 2nd generation Intel Core microprocessor, aka Intel Core i7/i5/i3 2xxx) system. The problem? A transistor with a thin gate oxide being driven by too high of a voltage. The aforementioned transistor is present in the clock tree circuitry of the 3Gbps SATA ports that branch off of all 6-series chipsets. The 6Gbps ports are unaffected. Over a period of 3 years, at least 5% of all these chipsets will have some failure on the 3Gbps SATA ports. The failure could start in the form of errors on the SATA link and ultimately result in an unusable SATA port. No damage to attached hardware should result.
The fix for the problematic transistor requires a hardware change. The 6-series chipset design doesn’t have to be redone, but there’s a metal layer change that must be made. The result is a new stepping of the 6-series chipsets. Intel shipped with stepping B2, and the fixed version will carry a B3 stepping.
Just half an hour ago, Gigabyte sent its replacement strategy for all of its own motherboards.
The key messages are as follows:
1) Gigabyte has stopped shipment to and recalled any unsold 6-series B2 motherboards from distributors and dealers.
2) Any Gigabyte 6-series B2 motherboards that have already been sold will be accepted back for replacement with a B3 board, regardless of condition. I asked Gigabyte if this meant that non-working boards could also be returned, Gigabyte said yes - all eligible 6-series models with B2 stepping chipsets will be accepted back.
| Elligible Gigabyte 6-series Motherboards | ||||||
| GA-P67A-UD3 | GA-P67A-UD3P | GA-P67A-UD4 | GA-P67A-UD5 | GA-P67A-UD7 | ||
| GA-H67MA-D2H | GA-H67MA-UD2H | GA-H67A-UD3H | GA-H67M-D2 | GA-H67M-UD2H | ||
4) The replacement program will happen at the dealer/distributor level. You will have to exchange your board at the location you purchased it from.
5) Customers can either exchange their board (you'll have to wait until April for this to happen) or you can get a full refund sooner (immediately?). Gigabyte recommends going the refund route as that gives you more flexibility for what you want to do next.
6) The replacement board you get will be a brand new motherboard based on the B3 chipset. Gigabyte isn’t ready to disclose if there will be any new design features to these boards as well.
7) The cost of the product exchange will be handled by Intel and Gigabyte (presumably Intel is footing the entire bill).
April is two months away, that’s later than the end of February. I’m guessing the first recipients of B3 stepping chipsets will be large OEMs and notebook manufacturers. The component guys will likely come second. Getting replacement motherboards won’t happen on April 1st if that’s when Gigabyte gets chipsets either. This could end up being an April/May thing instead of March/April.
Sending all returns/exchanges through the distributor/retailer channels is an interesting approach. I would rather Gigabyte handle the whole thing (e.g. send us an eligible board, we’ll send you a new one) but I can understand if getting the distributors/retailers to help makes things easier.
The refund option is a nice one, although I'm not sure whether etailers will let you return your CPU as well once it has been used. I suspect that's something you'll have to take up with the vendor itself. If you plan on sticking with a Sandy Bridge system, your best bet is probably to keep using your system as is today and just exchange when the time comes.
I'm glad Gigabyte will be providing brand new motherboards for users who opt to exchange and that Gigabyte is accepting boards regardless of condition. Gigabyte hasn't yet decided what it's going to do with all of the returned boards.
Until April rolls around, the best you can do is use the 6Gbps SATA ports on your Sandy Bridge board. We’ll keep you posted as we get more of these notices from manufacturers.
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Since starting our Bench results databases, they've grown by leaps and bounds. Bench is a central place where you can compare products based on the variety of tests and benchmarks we throw at them, and if you haven't checked it out already, you should, because it's downright huge. Our CPU bench alone has exploded, with test results for 121 different processors across 47 different disciplines. Today, Bench virtually doubles in size as we've added three new Benches.
First, and nearest and dearest to my heart, we introduce the Mobile Bench, a database of test results from over fifty different notebooks and netbooks across more than twenty different disciplines. Nearly every notebook we've tested since the beginning of 2010—and even a few towards the end of 2009—is represented here, although not all results are available on every notebook (i.e. high-detail gaming on a netbook isn't a concern). If you want to find the fastest gaming notebook or the best battery life on the market, check out our Mobile Bench.
Second and no less impressive is our Smartphone Bench. Featuring 27 different smartphones, our Bench contains results across 16 different tests, all easily searchable and sortable. If you're looking for the most talking time, the nicest screen, or the snappiest web browsing, the phone you're looking for is probably in our Smartphone Bench.
And finally, Ryan has been working overtime to produce our 2011 GPU Bench. It features the results of 29 different GPU configurations across 48 different tests, updated with DirectX 11 class hardware and the benchmarks to go with it along with some DirectX 10 hardware to use as a frame of reference.
Our Benches are updated regularly as new products get reviewed and entered into them (hence the staggering mass of our CPU Bench), and you find them all through the main AnandTech Bench page. As we review future phones, laptops, GPUs, and CPUs, the database will continue to grow. If you have any questions about or suggestions for the new Benches, please let us know in the comments!
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