What was the exact timeline of Intel's Cougar Point recall? How early did the company know about its problem? How does this affect the competitive AMD and Intel landscape? Continue reading to discover our answers to these lingering questions.
On January 31, Intel identified a problem with its Cougar Point chipset family affecting SATA 3Gb/s ports. Although that issue was expected to affect between 5 and 15% of systems over three years, we told our readers to wait for a fixed Sandy Bridge platform before buying into the platform, or swapping out their existing boards if they had already upgraded. Now that revised motherboards are starting to ship, we thought it would be interesting to take a more in-depth look into what Intel called a stop-shipment and its motherboard partners deemed a recall.

We're generally not the tinfoil-hat type that always assumes the worst. But we couldn't shake the feeling that there was much more to the story than what the marketing departments spun into webs of pleasing silk. That much is clear, and it was something on which everyone could agree. Unfortunately, Intel probably won't go into any more depth that what it has already divulged. We might get an update on the company's Q1 earnings call, but every bit of news is going to be in the form of raw financial numbers.

We've seen the news reports. Beyond the $700 million it will cost Intel to cover the stop-shipment, some analysts estimate the lost sales revenue will amount to another $300 million, adding up to about $1 billion. However, Intel’s original “expected” cost is no doubt going to fall short of the real loss because the reimbursement to each motherboard manufacturer is expected to grow.
The following questions remain: How much is everything going to cost? What was the exact timeline of the recall? How early did Intel know about the problem? Why did it make the decision to pull back shipments of P67 and H67 chipsets?
Furthermore, how does this affect the competitive AMD and Intel landscape? Two weeks after the recall, AMD appeared to have a boost of self-confidence when it sent out Valentine's Day cards that poked fun at its competitor.
Well that's why you shouldn't talk to strangers.
AMD could crow all they wanted, they didn't have a new product going to the shelf capable of beating the previous i-series. now had AMD released llano during this, they would have made a pre-emeptive death knell strike against sandybridge, but they didn't so it didn't matter what happened until AMD does.
as for the people who already bought a 'free' sata 2 device to sata3 replacement device coupon would have been cheaper also.
Intel just blew a huge marketing opprotunity to grind AMD under the imperial capitalist yankee boot.
IMO
But it somehow still brings me back to how AMD is still spending money on a product we haven't even seen benchmarks about yet.
Somebody who uses an OEM machine somewhere around the world MUST have released a benchmark of Llano or BD at some point in time.
I was very apprehensive about the switch but the new board performs flawlessly and one or two issues have disappeared maybe from updated drivers. I do wonder if the B3 stepping has one or two other small changes as I had to update the audio drivers for the sound on what seemed an identical board to work.
I may be a bit strange but i stopped buying products from Seagate, Nvidia, IBM and Creative buggy products. Reason for not buying Seagate and Nvidia was a problem Seagate harddrives had with Nvidia chipset(s), neither Nvidia nor Seagate seemed very interested in fixing the issue or own up to the fact that there was one, so i droped them on my hardware shortlist. IBM was the click of death thing on harddrives. And bad drivers made me stop buying Creative. I may consider Nvidia gpu's if a suitable one comes along, but my trust in the company is hurt and may never be restored.
I'm using a several-year-old CPU that does everything I want it to just fine. But the integrated graphics are abysmal. If I could change a single component, it would certainly be the graphics, the underpowered CPU still works just fine.
At least the part doesn't explode though ... for that you need a new NVidia Semtex 590.
Indeed they launched it a few days earlier than expected just to piss on the AMD Zacate launch.
They played with fire, and it's cost them a lot of money. But they're such a large company with so many fans willing to pay over the top for their 60%+ margin products that it's acceptable behaviour for them to dick with their customers and their OEMs like this.
Do you seriously think there aren't employees with decision making power in these OEM companies who have lost their holiday, gone through a lot of stress, etc, that won't remember this and exact revenge at some point in the future. I'm sure these people's holidays were refunded, and inconvenience payments made, but it doesn't really make up for the fact that in a busy year a major holiday was taken from them.
Last week? Newegg has them since last week and I bought a P67 sabertooth on tigerdirect 2 weeks ago...