i7-2630qm

Intel chip flaw whacks Best Buy rollout

Intel's Sandy Bridge chipset flaw is bringing some Best Buy new product rollouts to a screeching halt, according to representatives contacted at Best Buy stores.

Intel said Monday that it had stopped shipments of the chipset that accompanies its second-generation Intel Core ("Sandy Bridge") processor owing to a flaw that can affect access to a hard-disk drive, optical drive, or other device that connects to a computer using SATA technology.

As a result, PC makers including Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Toshiba have pulled systems from online sales as well as suspending sales at retailers like Best Buy.

Though … Read more

HP: PCs can be returned with faulty Intel chip

Hewlett-Packard announced today that customers can return products that use Intel's faulty Sandy Bridge chipset, following a similar announcement yesterday from Dell.

Intel said Monday that it had stopped shipments of the chipset that accompanies its Second-Generation Intel Core ("Sandy Bridge") processor due to a flaw that can affect access to a hard-disk drive, optical drive, or other device that connects to a computer using SATA technology.

Customers can "return their affected product and choose a comparable product or receive a refund," HP said today in a statement. The world's largest PC maker repeated … Read more

Reality check on Intel Sandy Bridge laptops

Intel's perplexing "innovation" endeavors notwithstanding, it does make, lest we forget, the world's fastest PC processors. Namely, Sandy Bridge. Systems using the freshly-minted chip are now widely available from top-tier vendors--but they're at the very high end of the pricing spectrum.

Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba serve as arguably the best examples of Sandy Bridge systems. Let's start with Toshiba's Qosmio X500-Q930S, which uses the Sandy Bridge i7-2630QM quad-core processor. That chip is rated at 2GHz but can automatically overclock--what Intel calls "Turbo Boost"--to 2.9GHz.

If Intel's most advanced quad-core … Read more