Tom's Blurb: All Owners of Systems With Intel's i820 Chipset That Don't Use RDRAM Yet Will Now Get It For Free From Intel!

Another bug was found in Intel's infamous 'i820' or 'Camino' chipset! Once more it is the so called 'MTH' = 'Memory Translator Hub', which has already made headlines with other bugs before. The bug was seemingly found by one of Intel's customers and then reproduced by Intel. This time it finally seems to be serious enough so that Intel decided to recall all i820-motherboards that are equipped with the 'MTH'. Motherboards with the i840 chipset that are using 'MTH' chips are obviously affected as well.

Do You Own I820 Plus SDRAM ?

The 'MTH' is only found in i820-boards that are NOT using RDRAM. The function of the 'MTH' is to translate the Rambus memory protocol that's used by RDRAM into the parallel protocol for SDRAM. It gives i820 the ability to use the much more price attractive SDRAM memory, and a large number of i820-boards have therefore an 'MTH' onboard. Intel is supplying a little software that finds out if your system is equipped with an 'MTH' chip. However, you only need to know if your i820-system is actually using SDRAM instead of the expensive RDRAM. If the answer to this is positive, you will have an 'MTH' on board.

Free RDRAM From Intel - Don't We Love That?

It will be a bitter pill for Intel, because they are not able to replace the 'defective' MTH-chip with a new one. 'MTH2' will not be available for quite a while. Therefore every owner of an MTH-equipped i820 motherboard will not only receive a new i820-motherboard without 'MTH', but also RDRAM to replace the SDRAM that was used before.

The Disaster Will Cost Intel Big Bucks

The estimate lies in a range of about a million motherboards that are affected. It will cost Intel several hundred million Dollars to replace the motherboards and supply the owner of the buggy MTH-chips with the expensive RDRAM as well.

Boost The Performance Of Your I820/SDRAM System Free Of Charge!

We know that i820 with MTH and SDRAM produces mediocre performance that is far worse than i820's predecessor 440BX. If you should own a board with the MTH, I advise you to get in touch with your place of purchase and get your free new board and RDRAM. This won't only free your system of some bugs, but it will improve performance as well.

Times for Intel are tough indeed and this issue will be another nail in the coffin of i820 or 'Caminogate '. Rambus however might love this issue, because it will push the sales of RDRAM once more. Finally you do indeed require a non-Intel chipset for 133 MHz FSB if you don't want to use the expensive RDRAM with its rather questionable performance.

Nobody Knows What's Going On

There seems to be a huge amount of confusion of who has to replace what and where you as an affected customer should go. Basically, the support is not ready to go just yet. Some Distributors/OEMs/VARs/Resellers and even Intel employees don't seem to even know what the exact situation is. If you should get turned down although you have got an i820- motherboard with the MTH and are thus eligible to receive a replacement board and RDRAM then I recommend to write directly to Intel and call them as well. Just be a pain in their butt! If Intel is not able to make sure that their employees and customers know what's going on they will have to live with a flood of emails telephone calls and threads on their servers. Go get'em!

Some Reseller's Have Their Own Understanding Of A Replacement ...

As just said in the above paragraph, there are tons of Distributors/OEMs/VARs/Resellers that don't really know much about the issue. Some resellers however are becoming quite practical. I just received an email from an affected reader: "Just to let you know, I contacted the people who sold me my CC820 motherboard, and they will not replace the MB with one that uses RDRAM, rather they will replace it with an ABIT MB that uses the VIA chipset and PC-100 or 133 SDRAM. They did seem to know about the recall, and that is how they are handling things. I would guess most dealers are doing the same, replacing the 820 based MTH motherboards with VIA system boards that use SDRAM. " As you can see in the 'OEM Pass Through' that I've published below, Intel states 'i820 plus RDRAM' as the valid alternative to i820 plus MTH and SDRAM. You can be sure that Intel does not want a defective Intel product to be replaced with a product from its archenemy VIA. I consider the idea of the reseller as brilliant as well as hilarious. Sure, a VIA Apollo Pro 133A board would be a perfect and still much faster replacement for i820 w/MTH, but it comes at a much lower price. However, I'm sure that Intel doesn't agree with this policy. If I were VIA I would try and take as much advantage out of this situation as I could. VIA could easily create slogans like "Don't use defective Intel products, get our working products instead!".

Intel Says: It's Not An Erratum! It's - Uhm - Well, What Else Is It?

Intel states in the 'OEM Pass Through' posted below that the MTH-issue is not an erratum. The reason is rather funny, as you can read below. It sounds as if you crash your car and tell the police officer that this is not to be considered an accident, because you were talking on your cell phone when it happened. Intel also doesn't want anyone to compare this MTH-problem with the Pentium FDIV-bug from 1994, when they had to replace tons of affected Pentium processors. What's the real difference dear Intel?