Is the Sandy Bridge in the new Macbook Pro defective or not?

The chipset error does not effect the first two SATA ports on the motherboard. The chipset can support up to six SATA ports. This is much more of an issue for desktop systems where it is common to have multiple hard drives and optical drives. It is relatively uncommon for notebooks to utilize more than two SATA ports (although some larger systems do utilize two hard drives along with an optical drive and eSATA connections are becoming a bit more common). The error will not impact the MacBooks as they are only using two SATA ports (the HDD or SSD and the optical drive).

You can find a little more info here:

http://blog.laptopmag.com/intel-and-oems-find-workaround-for-chipset-issue-sandy -bridge-notebooks-to-ship-again

that doesn't answer whether or not these chips are the faulty B2 ones... okay, we might not use these ports, but it's still defective, no?

Message was edited by: golgo1313

No, not for its intended use.

That's actually wrong. It affects all Sata II ports. It only doesn't effect laptops that have Sata III ports on 0 and 1.

It's a recall begging to happen.

Well, since Apple uses one SATA II port for the SuperDrive, and Intel made manufacturers agree to not using the faulty SATA II ports, one of two things can happen:

1) Apple used the fixed boards.

2) Apple broke the agreement with Intel and used the defective boards anyways.

It's pretty obvious that Apple would go with choice number one and use the fixed boards, as breaking that kind of agreement with Intel could mean some serious legal troubles. If the Superdrive was on a SATA III port, THEN, perhaps they would be using the defective boards. However, it isn't, so they aren't. 🙂

That's a bit trite.

Your terminology is mixed up btw:
Sata II = Sata 3gb/s
Sata III = Sata 6gb/s

The sata ports themselves aren't faulty, the Sata II controller is. Any Sata II port using that chipset is subject to failure.

The "fixed" chipsets haven't shipped yet. The risk calculation companies are using here is that the failure is ~3 years out. It's caused by a capacitor leak which grows over time and eventually fries the controller. Potential for failure increases through usage, so YMMV.

Relevant information:
1.Port 0 on the new MBP is the only Sata III, the rest of them are Sata II (including the port the superdrive is on). The hard drive occupies port 0
2.The fixed chipsets haven't shipped yet, so your Option 1 isn't possible

Their real options:
1. Ship now and allow service recalls in the future if/when failures begin happening, since 2-3 years from now no one will remember this recall from Intel if they knew about it in the first place.
2. Wait and ship the new MBPs a few weeks late, hurting the stock price.

It's pretty obvious if you do a little research that they went with option 1.

Reference board implementation:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6series-chipset-begins -recall
New MBP Port 1
http://grab.by/grabs/1b8a0907f3fc1406b02ffe32c20c52fa.png

The "Ports 0 and 1 are fine" misconception comes from the Intel 6 Series Reference desktop board, which has Sata III on ports 0 and 1. The problem won't be fixed until the new chipsets ship

The hard drive on the new MBP will be fine, but the super drive is on a defective port.

Message was edited by: KKitty

Actually, ...

In the defective Sandy Bridge chips, SATA 3Gbps ports were affected and SATA 6Gbps ports were not. Based on observations reported in another forum, the new 2011 MBP's seem to use 6Gbps SATA ports for the HD and 3Gbps SATA ports for the DVD. Since (a) the problem isn't supposed to become noticable until after years of use, and (b) DVD's don't even get much use, and (c) your data can't be lost if writing to DVD fails (assuming the OS tells you so), and (d) Apple would probably fix a known defect if they ever got their hands on one that had it, ...., well, in the worst case there doesn't seem much risk here.

Meanwhile, an Apple executive has been reported as saying the fixed chips are being used in the 2011 MBP's. It's up to you to guess whether he meant just now or only/ever, but I'd guess that at least any MBP's they're making now must have the new chip.

There are utilities available under Windows that can report the chipset version. (E.g., Gigabyte offers one.) AFAIK, so far no one has reported finding the defective version of the chip in any 2011 MBP, so it sounds pretty safe at this point (and verifiable) as far as the chipset version is concerned.

See this page:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4205/the-macbook-pro-review-13-and-15-inch-2011-br ings-sandy-bridge/5

It appears that Apple got the fixed B3 stepping early.

The sample size of 1 in that article doesn't reassure me much on its own since Apple should have been able to get some of the new chips early, but it is reassuring that I haven't seen any reports of any of the weak chipsets actually showing up in any MBP.