When we last checked on the progress of Intel’s Sandy Bridge recall motherboard manufacturers were waiting eagerly for Intel’s fixed B3 stepping P67 and H67 chipsets to hit their factories. That happened a week or so ago and now new motherboards are starting to trickle back out into the market. It will still be a few weeks until volume ramps up though, and we’ll be keeping an eye on programs in place for replacing motherboards affected by Intel’s buggy B2 stepping chipsets.
One of the big worries with this recall is that unscrupulous or uninformed retailers will keep selling the buggy boards, which has already led to some pretty swift clampdowns. So to combat this motherboard makers have come up with various labeling schemes designed to highlight motherboards with B3 stepping chipsets.
MSI has announced a labeling program, whereby the newer motherboards will be emblazoned with a B3 stepping ready sticker. ASUS is doing a similar thing, labeling its products with a sticker stating ‘New P67 B3 Revision’. Gigabyte is also labeling its motherboards, but also going a step further and has renamed its entire product line to differentiate the new from the old. Model names with –B3 at the end use the new chipsets, and this is on the motherboard, packaging and BIOS screens just so you can be sure.
We have attached the various images below, so you can easily identify whether the product you are buying uses the updated Intel chipset.
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