Tell me what's so wrong with going with A current SB?

FlyingSpaghettiMonster

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Ok I have gone back and forth the last couple weeks on a new gaming rig. I had an AMD rig pegged until my budget increased two-fold. Being an AMD guy, even I realized that at this point and time the value is in the SB processors. But I do not want to wait months for a fix. I'm running an ancient Athlon 64 single core, OEM Gateway P.O.S. I've suffered through this thing as long as humanly possible and loathe the idea of waiting when I finally have the cash and time to build a new reg.

Having said that from what I understand the only real problem with the SB chips is that you lose 3-4 Sata Controller but 1-2 work perfectly normal. If this is the case, If I built a system with a nice big SSD and nice big Sata HD, and use IDE optical drives, would I really be missing out on anything? Is there really any performance increase in optical drives, and if so, since I'm not into much burning, or ripping, should I have any other reasons to hold me back from pursuing this? I haven't researched it yet, but from what I can tell the boards and procs are still out there and though harder to find they have not had any price gouging and are still a good value. Couldn't I just add a sata controller card later on if I found it necessary for a 3rd or 4th Sata connector? I really want to do this, but I just want the advice of some people more informed than I whether or not there is some big disadvantage I'm missing here by going forth with the SB set-up and just giving up the extra controllers.

Thank you in advance.

FSM
 
Solution
While that would work in theory, and the problem only shows up later in life, there's a bigger problem: finding somewhere still selling the boards. Most retailers (i.e. Newegg) have pulled ALL SB components. You can't find the CPU for sale and you can't find the boards. So there wouldn't be an issue with the actual build, but there'd be a big problem with actually finding parts. I don't except them to begin selling the parts again until the problem has been fixed. Even if you could find the parts, I'd be willing to bet that by buying a product with a known defect, you'll lose any rights you would have had under the warranty. So if you get the board and it stops working a month later, you're just SOL.

I'd also be wary of SB in...
While that would work in theory, and the problem only shows up later in life, there's a bigger problem: finding somewhere still selling the boards. Most retailers (i.e. Newegg) have pulled ALL SB components. You can't find the CPU for sale and you can't find the boards. So there wouldn't be an issue with the actual build, but there'd be a big problem with actually finding parts. I don't except them to begin selling the parts again until the problem has been fixed. Even if you could find the parts, I'd be willing to bet that by buying a product with a known defect, you'll lose any rights you would have had under the warranty. So if you get the board and it stops working a month later, you're just SOL.

I'd also be wary of SB in general until a fix is announced. If Intel let one massive design flaw through, there might be others that haven't been discovered. I'd just want to be safe.

Also, Intel is supposedly allowing boards to be released again later this month, as long as the manufacturers include a SATA card with it. So it's possible you could find them in a month or so.

Either way, I'd highly advise that you just stick it out for a while. The massive performance boost of SB is worth waiting a month or two for a revision. Another option is that you could buy the new GPU, PSU and/or case, and use the old CPU, board, RAM and HDD until SB is released. You'd get better performance (assuming you're gaming) in the short term, and you'd have the majority of your build in place.
 
Solution

sandybridge

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You call yourself a AMD fan and you don't wanna wait for Bulldozer? That doesn't compute at all. I am not a fan of any brand loyalty. As soon as a company gives me the best bang for my buck, they'll get my money. Right now it's SB cuz I already bought it. It's been smooth sailing so far. I'm using only the 1st 2 SATA 6gbps connectors.

BTW, no one other than Intel has been able to reproduce the SATA bug. Even then, you'd need 3+ years to see the bug surface by slowing down for about 5-10%.

My mobo is MSI. They just offered free exchange with paid-for 2-way(cross) shipping. ASUS & Gigabyte should have a similar offering. I may take advantage of it. It'd be 1 week (3-day each shipping) without a pc. The problem being is I NEED a working pc.

http://www.intel.com/consumer/products/processors/chipset.htm

Bulldozer is coming this Q2.
 

FlyingSpaghettiMonster

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I would really, really like to wait for Bulldozer, or SB for that matter, but I've given up. If I could actually find a SB proc and MoBo I might go for it. But I haven't been able to. I normally work 70 hours a wk and I have a months vacation in front of me with a fat tax return in my lap and POS computer that I can hardly surf the web with, so I'm giving in and building a 1090T system and OC'ing the crap out of it. Not my first choice, or second choice, but oh well. =/
Here's link to what I settled on http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/305058-13-final-build-critique#t2266112