Any idea on when the Sandy Bridges are going to be sold again

^ Thanks but no thanks because even though it's cheap and reliable, the ASRock Extreme4 is just too power hungry compared to both MSI and Asus in this price range. If you subtract that from the price difference and then look at the features list, I think you'll see why MSI and Asus are still better bang for the buck after all.

 

So are you saying the ASRock Extreme4 and Extreme6 don't use the Intel SATA 3G ports and only use the Intel SATA 6G ports with Marvel (or other) controllers,.....?

 

For what its worth, I have heard that ASRock only has a 1 yr warranty whereas the others (ASUS and ohers) typically have 3 yr warranty.

 

http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=P67 Extreme6&cat=Specifications

 

I talked to almost every manufacturer today most dont even know but...some off the record say 1st week in may for pc parts,notebook/prefabs may be earlier.

mc had to pull them just like every place else besides ebay
mc is still selling the cpus thuo.

 

I haven't bothered to check on that but if it's true then I would definately not even consider getting the ASRock Extreme6 just to work around the Intel SATA2 design flaw.

The four Marvell SATA3 ports do not support RAID as you can see in my previous post here in this topic. To get the most out of the two Intel SATA3 ports I would be putting two Crucial C300 SSDs on them in RAID 0. The ramaining four Marvell ports would have to be used for four harddrives in software RAID 0 (using Disk Management in Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise or Ultimate). So then where would my Blu Ray drive fit in? That is, if at all I were to be satisfied with the other fact the Marvell, when run in SATA2 mode, is still going to be slower than the Intel SATA2 even if the latter is actually the one that has the design flaw in it? I mean, c'mon lol.

 

Here is a simple fix for any SB problem:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcrLbzcscqY&feature=player_embedded

 

Good news for me and other people that are curious

''Fixed Intel chip to ship in mid-February''
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20030920-64.html

And CNet

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20030936-1.html

 

today there was a newsline about intel resuming shipments. but it could still take a while until you can buy one.

you should still be fine until then

 

That would appear to be a hungry TigerDirect-ly biting off one of the expansion slots of your motherboard by unscrupulously trying to make you assume you will never be needing it for anything other than their shiny controller card you're going to sacrifice it for, in total disregard of whether or not the assumption matches reality. They didn't even bother to tell you specifics about the card in that video at all, so I'd take it as a clear invitation to send the *beep* *beep* motherboard back.

 

not necessarily.

intel are shipping the chip mid february.

you still need to factor in the time required for the board partners to integrate the new chips into their boards and then ship them out to suppliers. add more time for suppliers to ship them out to stores.

still looking at around march at the earliest unless youre buying an intel branded board.

 

They do have a point though. I mean, how many SATA ports do you really use anyways? I use 2 in total. One for my hard drive and the other one for my DVD burner. If 2 died on my motherboard I would not care...

 

Thanks for the info,….

Looks to me like the ASRock boards make use of the same effected Intel SATA 3G ports as all the other P67 boards so I don’t see this as a reasonable alternative to anyone,……….

Unless they want to buy now and return later for a corrected board or live with the flaw.

I couldn't agree more.

That’s an interesting way to put it.

So you’re saying that if you just bought a ~$150 to ~$250 P67 motherboard and you couldn’t use the 4 Intel SATA 3G ports due to the defect you wouldn’t care because you only need 2 ports? Further still you’re saying that once the corrected motherboards became available you wouldn’t bother with trading in the defective board for a corrected one because you already have 2 working ports?

I can’t say I would think in that direction but then I’m running a 3x SSD RAID 0 array and wanted to run a 4x SSD RAID 0 array. The only thing that stopped me from setting up the 4x SSD RAID 0 array was that one was of a different make and model. I'd still like to reserve a port for it though. Then I need a port for at least one conventional HDD and an optical drive,....

 

To start with, I will get one SSD that uses SATA3 and then I'll add a second one to it later on. An optical drive and at least one harddrive is obviously also needed. All of the remaining ports are going to be used to upgrade the harddrive to a RAID 0 array of multiple harddrives, to narrow the performance gap between SSD and harddrive as well as to have more storage capacity. My external harddrive capacity right now is 5.5 TB (four enclosures with one harddrive inside each of them).

 

RAID is nothing but nonsense anyways. I wouldn't waste 1 single second of my time with RAID. Buy 1 single big hard drive and you have zero problems duh! You don't need several SATA ports 99% of the time...Also anyone that actually need 5TB of storage is an idiot IMO. Just usless junk you never use and just shows how much of a horder you probally are LOL

 

No I wouldn't care. Why would I care about something I would never use? That would be like caring about eating a bag of popcorn knowing I never eat it or care to eat it. I am not one of those people that go around in life fussing about things that will not effect me. I still do not understand why you guys even mess with RAID anysways. It is a silly excuse to buy more and more hard drives only to fill it all up with crap you never use, then only to worry about losing all that usless data some time down the road LOL...makes zero sense and you guys really need to give your heads a shake and realize that using a PC can be about simplicity, functionality.

 

You guys ever watch the TV show "The hoarders"? This what RAID is to me, virtual hoarding! I really do not see why you guys feel the need to fill up your hard drives with usless stuff? I have 1 single 500GB hard drive with 380GB of free space on it. I have over 200 DVD+R's with 4 movies on each for my collection. I do not have them on my hard drive because that would be stupid and force me to buy another hard drive. I simply burn them all to my DVD collection! There is not a single sane reason why anyone would need 5TB of storage space. Try to convice me on that one...LOL

 

dude, the asrock extreme6 has 6x sata 6gbps ports unaffected by the issue, plus two more esata 6gbps ports unaffected. its the best bang per buck alternative available at the moment.

 

I’m sure the ASRock Extreme4 and Extreme6 are great boards. Most things I have heard and read about them are positive. They are not free from the Intel series 6 chipset SATA 3G bug though. So they shouldn’t be promoted as such.

6 SATA 6G ports are great but only 2 of them can be off the Intel chipset. The others have to be Marvel or other. Unfortunately many if not all of these non-Intel solutions (marvel) I have seen have had performance levels lower then expected.

 

I thought they were suppose to be selling "defective" motherboards starting this week?
Or do I have to wait another month still?