Sandy Bridge Motherboard BUG!

Well, it looks like Intel has found a bug in the SATA controller used on P67 motherboards for Sandy Bridge CPUs shipped since January 9th. You can read more details on it here. The boards have been pulled from the shelves, and a recall is planned. For now...

What should you do about this?

-I've pulled down the January page on Sandy Bridge workstation configs. You can't buy them now anyway, since the motherboards are not available from Newegg. Replacement motherboards should hit stores soon, and when that happens I will re-introduce Sandy Bridge systems as part of the (hopefully) February workstations list. Affected workstations are the Photoshopper, Budget and Midrange, January editions.

-Don't buy a Sandy Bridge system until the new motherboards hit stores. How will you know when that happens? Newegg.com will show Socket 1155 motherboards in stock. Check for the part numbers on Newegg after they re-emerge, and look for those part numbers. If you buy from a vendor, like Dell, check with them before buying to make sure they can provide an unaffected motherboard.

-If you want to buy a workstation right now, you can buy any of the December configurations with confidence. (Even the December, pre-Sandy Bridge versions of the Photoshopper, Budget and Midrange, which are as powerful now as they were a month ago!)

-If you currently have a Sandy Bridge system based on an H67 motherboard (your motherboard supports the CPU's onboard video) you probably don't have a problem. Don't worry about it, unless Intel or your motherboard maker tells you otherwise.

-If you currently have a Sandy Bridge system based on a P67 motherboard (your motherboard does not support the CPU's onboard video) and you bought it after January 9th you might or might not have a problem. BUT your computer is probably not going to break - at least not any time soon. The bug is in actual materials of a motherboard component that degrade over time - meaning that it will take a while to break. Do the following:

1. Keep important files backed up. (You should do this anyway.)
2. Don't panic. Your computer almost certainly still works.
3. Keep an eye on the support sites for your motherboard manufacturer or PC vendor. Watch for your motherboard or PC to be recalled. This should happen in the next few months.

If you bought an INTEL MOTHERBOARD like the one in the January Budget system, read this: http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/CS-032263.htm

If you bought an ASUS MOTHERBOARD, check back with them in a few days. They are preparing a response. But I imagine they have their hands a bit full just now.

Intel's new Sandy Bridge CPUs

Intel just announced their new CPUs and several enthusiast web sites have published pre-release reviews. I'm not sure when these are going to be available from vendors, but it looks like soon, and there will be an update to some of the workstation configurations.

A few quick notes:

All these CPUs will require a new motherboard. They use a new socket type, 1155, that is Sandy Bridge's answer to the 1156 socket used by i3, i5 and some i7 desktop CPUs. This isn't Intel trying to sell you more stuff - there were a number of chipset updates required, so the P55 and H55 motherboards wouldn't have worked anyway.

This round of CPUs will fit into the midrange and high-midrange market segments. The high-end is still held by Intel's two 6-core i7 chips for the 1366 platform. These won't be supplanted until Intel releases a new high-end motherboard and 8-core CPUs, several months from now.

The Midrange and Photoshopper builds, and probably the Budget, are going to need to be replaced. The i7-2600K beats the AMD 1100T in multithreaded rendering (but is about 30%, plus or minus, slower than the i7-980X in the December High End config) and runs Photoshop CS5 faster than... well, anything. It does all this while using less power.

The Core i5-2500K is also a heck of a bargain at around $200, with performance around what a current model $300 i7 will give you and a lot of overclocking potential (see below).

The CUDA boxes will not need to be updated. There are currently two chipsets supporting Sandy Bridge CPUs, the H67 and the P67. The H67 supports onboard video and allows one PCIE x16 card. The P67 does not support onboard video and allows one x16 or two x8 cards. This is not sufficient for multiple video cards running CUDA. (But I don't recommend CUDA for most users anyway.)

Intel's built up hopes for integrated GPUs. Enthusiasts were skeptical. Enthusiasts were right. To make benchmark comparisons a real competition, web sites had to dig up video cards like the Radeon 5450, which is so slow it didn't make the cut for the Intern box.

Oh, and by the way, overclockers. They've gone and changed everything for you. See, with the last few generations, most CPUs have locked multipliers but unlocked BCLK. With the new generation, BCLK is almost completely immobile - if the CPU wants 100MHz, you can get 103 if you're lucky. Overclocking requires multiplier adjustment.

Sandy Bridge CPUs without Turbo Boost have a fully locked multiplier, so what the box says is what you get. CPUs with Turbo have a semi-unlocked multiplier: you can increase it by up to the number of its best Turbo mode.

K series Sandy Bridge CPUs have fully unlocked multipliers, and testers have reported results that are just a bit nuts, like getting a 3.4GHz chip to 4.4GHz with the Intel stock cooler. (Please don't try this at home.)