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Cougar Point has two sets of SATA ports: four that support 3Gbps operation and two that support 6Gbps. For the first set Intel states that performance of SATA-linked devices "may degrade over time". However, since 6Gbps SATA III circuits have their own independent clocking trees these ports will be unaffected by the problem.
Apparently an OEM that was testing the platform with extreme heat and voltage environments originally discovered the problem and reported it back to Intel. The chip giant believes that no end users have been affected so far -- and even if they are at least data loss isn't a problem. Intel estimates that the failure rate over a 3-year system life would be about 5%, which is high enough for the company to stop shipments and work on a silicon fix.
Current 6-series motherboard owners worried about performance issues are advised to try and only use ports 0 and 1 (the 6Gbps ports) until they can get a replacement or fix. Of course, for those with more than a couple of drives this will be impossible to do, but thankfully many motherboard makers often support additional SATA ports through third-party chipsets, or on a PCI-E SATA or RAID controller, and these will remain unaffected.
The scenario is a little less clear for Sandy Bridge notebooks since they don't usually have a lot of storage bays and thus don't always use all of the ports a chipset offers. If the design only uses SATA ports 0 and 1 then the end user would never encounter an issue and models currently in the pipeline shouldn't be affected by any delays, at least in theory.
User Comments: 55
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Does this mean that you two are not going to drop everything you're doing, and assuage my deep rooted, nagging fears, about the possible failure of a motherboard I don't actually own, and have no intention of buying?
>Hi.Welcome.To.MegadouchePowerrrrPC?.
>My name is
>
>
>"Dave"
>How.May.I.Be.Of.Assistance?
>Yeah, it's about my motherb
>My name is
>oard. What's happening re the RM
>Dave
>A
>Do.You.Have.Any.Further.Questions?
>Listen up buster, you haven't answered the
>We.At.MegadouchePowerrrrPC?.Are.Glad.To.Be.Able.To.Help
>first question!!!!
>DoesThis.Resolve.The.Problem
>No !!!!!
> Thank.You.For.Choosing.MegadouchePowerrrrPC?
> Would.You.Like.A.Transcript.Sent.To.Your.Email.Address.
>What?...IfI weretotheorticallybuyaP67boardthatfeaturesCougarPointwhichha
a6.1wattTDP*whatsupportcanIexpectto>
> Dave has signed out
(Note: MegadouchePowerrrrPC? is a ficticious OEM. Any resemblance to Hewlett-Packard support is purely co-incidental)
*Useful Cougar Point factoid.
Giving it some thought though, I wonder if I should submit my article, "DRAM, now available in Suppository", to the "Digest" as well....If it concentrates on I/O throughput then it should be right up RD's alley!
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(Note: MegadouchePowerrrrPC? is a ficticious OEM. Any resemblance to Hewlett-Packard support is purely co-incidental)
*Useful Cougar Point factoid.
Well thanx anyway, MegadouchePowerrrrPC?, I'm never even going to consider possibly buying one of these boards from another maker, ever again.
Way back when men were men, and hard drives were, well hard, MegadoucheStorageConglomerate?, would have at least had the courtesy to slap together a faulty firmware update, that would have bricked the part altogether, thereby circumventing the aggravation and hardship of your inaccessible RMA procedure. This would have been instrumental in allowing me to move on, in an attempt to piece together the tattered shards of my life, that your faulty motherboard have created.
Go Eagles! No really, go.
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Thanks G, already there. Maybe you missed my riveting (condensed) articles; "I Am Joe's Thermal Compund" and "Isopropyl Alcohol is the Best Medicine"
Indeed, while those were brilliant Chef...I enjoyed your fictional works. My favorites were "A tale of a City" and "Some of the Kings Men"
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Indeed, while those were brilliant Chef...I enjoyed your fictional works. My favorites were "A tale of a City" and "Some of the Kings Men"
Oy...! Now you're going to tell me that doesn't rate a boo, aren't you?
My favorites are, "Dances with Wolf", and, "Didn't quite Make it out of New York".
For adult entertainment, it would be, "Snow White and the Two Dwarfs". (Condensed dual entendre)
That last one is hot enough to blow the SATA controller right out of a Cougar Point chipset board.
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Luckily I learnt from the RD editing process. I negotiated my my next article to be index linked to government fiscal spending, so look out for "20 Billion Leagues Under the Sea" running through to the November 2015 issue (or impeachment...whichever comes first).
BTW*: Cougar Point covers twelve different chipsets (C202, 204 and 206 for Xeon E3-12xx, P67, H67 and H61 for desktop, B65 and Q67 for office/business, and HM65, HM67, QM67 and QS67 for the monile markets).
BTW = Back on Topic Woohoo
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